


Cosmic Love

by rose_gardens



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Alien Abduction, Alien/Human Relationships, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Space, Armin Arlert & Krista Lenz | Historia Reiss Are Related, Bonding over trauma, Cross-Posted on Wattpad, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, Lesbians in Space, Mikasa Ackerman & Eren Yeager Are Siblings, Redemption, Slow Build, Yearning, ace/lesbian solidarity, falling in LOVE in OUTER SPACE, they don't even learn annie's name for at least 16 chapters, unlearning prejudices, very slow build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2020-06-25 05:41:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 28,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19739428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rose_gardens/pseuds/rose_gardens
Summary: Mikasa doesn't want to believe. She doesn't want to believe that her brother was abducted by aliens. She doesn't want to believe that she likes girls. She doesn't want to believe that one of the aliens that kidnapped her brother is going to help them bring him back.But she won't be able to deny these things for long, because they're all true.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a space/alien au. It's primarily mikannie, but there are other ships in the background, like a tiny bit of eruri, some yumikuri, and reibert (and possibly eremin, but we'll see). It's heavily inspired various space shows/movies, but mainly Steven Universe.

"You aren't even my real family, so shut the hell up!"

Eren regretted the words as soon as he said them. He looked around the room, at the faces of his adoptive family. All three were silent and frozen in shock. His dads were both clearly upset, angry even, but the look of utter gut-wrenching betrayal on his sister Mikasa's face was the worst by a mile.

"I'm gonna take a walk," Eren said quickly, and turned so his family couldn't see him cry. Before they could protest, he threw open the front door and slammed it behind him. He could hear the sound of Mikasa shouting his name, but he blocked it out.

The autumn night air was crisp and cool. Eren regretted not bringing a jacket - or his phone, for that matter - but he didn't want to go back into the house and deal with his family. He didn't know where he was going, exactly, just letting his legs take him where they willed. Anywhere was good, so long as it wasn't there.

Eren eventually came to a stop outside of the old farmhouse where his best friend Armin lived. It was just out of town, on a big plot of farmland. He hadn't realised he'd walked this far.

Eren considered going inside. Armin's stepmother was used to him coming over all the time, and would probably let him stay over for the night. He walked up to the front door and knocked. There was a light on inside, which relieved Eren.

The door opened, and Eren was greeted by Armin's twin sister Historia.

"Hey, Eren, long time no see!" She said with her usual cheerful disposition. "We're just finishing up dinner, want to come in?"

Eren nodded. Historia caught on to his upset state. "You go up to Armin's room, I'll tell him you're here." She paused. "And the old lady, too. Guess I should tell her... If you're here... Cause it's her house and all... Just come in."

Eren walked in, past the kitchen and straight upstairs to Armin's room. He opened the door and sat down on the bed. He looked out the window at the farmland. In the distance, a dog barked. Outside was still, aside from a faint breeze gently blowing the corn. The light from an aeroplane blinked across the clear sky.

He turned around to the door, to see Armin come into the room in a hurry.

"Eren, what's wrong?" He asked, worried. Eren pulled his legs onto the bed. Armin walked over and sat in front of him.

"I got into another argument with my family..." Eren said under his breath.

Armin cringed. "How bad was it?"

Eren looked away, embarrassed.

"Answer me," Armin pushed.

"I basically told them that since we weren't blood related they didn't matter."

Eren shut his eyes and braced himself for Armin's inevitable rant about how what he did was wrong and that family was more than just blood relatives, but it never came. Instead, he felt two arms wrap around his waist. He opened his eyes, and saw that Armin was hugging him. He hugged back.

"How did they take it?" Armin asked, mumbling into his shoulder.

"I don't know." Eren leaned out of the hug. "I left before I could see their reaction."

"Do they know you're here?"

"They'll guess eventually. There's nowhere else I'd go."

That was true. Eren spent a lot of time at Armin's house. So much, in fact, that Mrs Reiss joked about having more of other people's kids living at her house than her own.

Armin sighed. "You need a filter," he said.

Uh oh. Eren knew he wouldn't be able to escape the lecture.

"If you keep saying stupid shit like this, then you're going to lose them. You have to learn to think about what you say before you say it, Eren, or else..." Armin paused. "Else you'll end up like my birth mum."

Eren furrowed his brows. He had never met Armin's biological mother, but he had heard enough from Historia. "I won't-"

"Just stop, okay?" Armin ran his hands through his hair, bunching it into a short ponytail, then letting it fall. "Sorry. You don't want to end up as the one relative who gets smack-talked at every gathering, do you?"

"I guess not," Eren mumbled.

"Good." Armin looked as if he was going to say something else, but froze, remembering something. "I need to show you something," he said quietly, making his way to the door.

"What?" Eren asked, standing up. Armin turned around.

"It's... I need to show it to you for you to understand." He nodded in the direction of downstairs. "Follow me."

Eren followed Armin downstairs. Dinner had finished by now, and the family was either in their rooms or gathered in the lounge. Armin grabbed a torch from the nightstand.

"You going home, Eren?" Mrs Reiss called from the lounge room.

"We're going out to the barn!" Armin called back. He handed Eren a jacket, and shrugged one on himself. Mrs Reiss seemed content with the answer.

"Do you want me to call your parents?" Historia asked as she walked down the hall. She stopped and stared at Armin. "Is that my jacket?"

"Your jacket is way nicer than mine," he replied. Historia looked annoyed, but ignored the jacket. 

"He always does this," she told Eren. Armin stuck his tongue out at her.

"Don't call them just yet," Eren said. "Maybe later."

Historia nodded in understanding. "If you need to stay the night, you know where the spare blankets are." She left the hall, back to the lounge room where the rest of the family was.

Armin, with his twin's jacket now fully on, opened the door and stepped out into the night.

Stopping on the front porch to close the door behind him, Armin clicked his torch on. The beam lit the boys' way as they walked to the barn across the Reiss property. In the dark, the trip felt longer. The gravel that crunched beneath their shoes sounded louder. It gave Eren a sense of unease, which was not aided by Armin being mysterious about what he wanted to show him.

After what felt like an eternity, they came to the barn. Armin pushed the door open and flicked the torch around. The beam fell over everything in the space, casting eerie shadows on the walls. Eren shuddered. Armin walked further into the barn and pulled aside a curtain.

"It's a drone?" Eren asked, puzzled. "That you took apart?" 

Armin shook his head. "I thought it was a drone as well," he said. He picked the object up and brought it to the worktable in the middle of the barn's entry room. "It crashed over by the pine trees near the property fence a few days ago. At first I thought it was a drone, but when I took it apart-" Armin spread the remains of the 'drone' over the table "-I saw this."

"Was something supposed to happen?"

Armin bit his lip. "Well, it was glowing."

"I'm sorry, it was doing what now?" Eren asked.

"Glowing. And besides, I've taken drones apart before, and this is built way differently from anything I've ever seen before."

"Glowing..." Eren considered. "What do you think, radiation?"

"I don't know," Armin said. "but whatever it was, it's weird."

A sudden sharp pain in the front of his head caused Eren to wince. Armin noticed immediately and rushed to his side.

"What's wrong?" He asked, his voice laced with worry. Eren waved him away.

"It's fine, just a headache," Eren said.

"Are you sure?" Armin frowned. "Look, we have some stuff up in the house that can help-"

"I'm fine!" Eren snapped. "Sorry. I think I just need some space."

Eren stepped out of the barn, taking in deep breaths. His head hurt. He'd been having the headaches for a while now, but this was the worst of them by far. He wanted to cry, wanted to shout, wanted to throw up - it was pain that Eren hadn't felt since his mother died.

He walked away from the barn, into the corn field. Perhaps he might find some peace out here.

But the drone, or whatever it was. There was something about it that Eren had recognised. He wasn't sure why it was so familiar, but a part of him was telling him that it wasn't good news.

The same part of him that was telling him to run when the floodlight beamed down at him.

Eren tried to run. He wanted to run. But he was frozen in spot. Try as he might, he couldn't move. He thought perhaps he was frozen in fear, but wouldn't he still be able to blink?

Eren couldn't move his head, but he did hear the barn door get thrown open and Armin screaming after him. That was the last thing Eren heard before his surroundings became a blinding, sterile white.


	2. Missing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikasa deals with the fact that her brother is missing, but Armin comes forward with some vital information.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I'm probably going to edit this all at some point because this is not my proudest chapter. Enjoy, y'all.

Three days had passed since Eren's disappearance. Mikasa Ackerman was sitting in the police station, on the verge of tears. She remembered being woken up in the middle of the night by Levi, his face paler than usual. She remembered him telling her to get dressed, and her asking why, and him telling her about the phone call from the police station. She remembered, most vividly of all, the feeling of emptiness that grew with every word.

The investigation was underway by now, but that didn't stop Mikasa from coming to the station every day for updates.

"He didn't run away, officer," she said, emphasising the didn't. 

"We understand that, but we have to consider all options-"

"Somebody has him. He wouldn't have run away-"

"Ms Ackerman, would you calm down!"

Mikasa sat in shock. She hadn't expected the officer, a family friend, to shout at her. 

Officer Dok sighed and rested his head in his hands. This whole family had been nothing but trouble for him, ever since... Well, highschool. Nile had been in the same class as Erwin, and had witnessed many times before his ability to bullshit his way out of any situation he pleased. 

When Nile graduated, he went straight into the police force. Erwin went into a company, some big business, and was never really an issue from then on. What was an issue, however, was what appeared to be a feral cat that was dragged into the station one evening. The man, Levi Ackerman, was only a few years younger than himself but by the Lord he got himself into trouble. He was in the station nearly every other night, usually for beating up pimps. Nile hated to say it, but the scrawny guy did more to lower the crime rate than half the cops on the force. However, being an officer of the law he couldn't excuse violence, no matter how noble its intentions. 

Until one day, the one and only Erwin Smith waltzed into the station and decided to take Levi under his wing. The next thing Nile knew, the two were dating.

It would have been years ago, now, but Nile remembered quite vividly the day he'd gone out to do some emergency shopping - his wife had been heavily pregnant with their first child - and seen none other than Erwin Smith, carrying a small child in his arms and talking to her about their shopping list. He had turned around and seen him, and smiled as if they hadn't been arch nemeses. Nile had unwillingly gone along with the small talk, as you did when you saw an old friend from highschool. He tried not to ask about the girl, but in the end the temptation became too strong.

"Oh, you haven't met Mikasa yet, have you?" Erwin replied when he asked. "This is our daughter."

He put emphasis on the word daughter, smiling a very much fake smile as he did so. The girl in question buried her face into her dad's shoulder, not wanting to talk to the stranger.

"Put her down, she's five. She can walk," somebody said behind him, and he looked around to see Levi, shocked to notice that he no longer resembled a drowned rat. He looked responsible, like the sort of person you would trust with your keys or children. He gave Nile a scowl. "What do you want?" He'd asked. Nile had said goodbye, and walked off to pay for his items.

In the years since then, Nile had found himself becoming something of a friend towards his old nemesis, though reluctantly. Erwin tried to be friendly, but Levi very clearly wanted Nile to have nothing to do with him or his kids.

Oh, and the kids. Mikasa would cling to the side of her adopted brother, Eren. He had been adopted into the family at age eight, and despite never getting into legal trouble, Nile had heard about him. Everyone in town knew about the doctors' son. How he would lash out in anger at teachers or even, according to some rumors, his own family. Whether these rumours were true or not was unknown to Nile. 

"Do you want to hear our leading theory?" Nile asked. Mikasa didn't give a verbal answer, but she looked at him in interest. "It is entirely possible that your brother ran away to find his father. As you know, Dr Jaeger went missing eight years ago, and despite our best efforts has not been located. We believe that, following your family's argument, he left to look for his biological family."

"But he disappeared from the cornfield," Mikasa said quietly, her voice still unstable with the tears. "And everyone knows that Dr Jaeger died."

"Everyone thinks," Nile replied, in a tone as gentle as he could muster. "We have no concrete evidence to say that Dr Jaeger is dead."

Mikasa sat back in the plastic seat. "Can I go home now?" She asked, defeated. 

"You're excused," Nile said. She got up, and grabbed her bag. "Oh, wait - tell your dad that we're coming around tomorrow night. Marie's insisting."

"Okay," she said, before finally leaving.

\--

The evening air was cool, and Mikasa pulled her scarf up over her face to guard against it. It was getting colder now, and many houses had Halloween decorations set up. Mikasa couldn't help but smile; when she and Eren were young, they had excitedly gone trick-or-treating around the neighbourhood. And then her smile faded as she remembered that Eren wasn't there anymore. She wiped the tears from her eyes and kept walking. 

Her house wasn't too far away. She unlocked the front door, and entered silently. She was never the sort of person to loudly announce her arrival anyway, and she wasn't in the mood for that sort of thing.

When she came into the kitchen, she noticed Levi sitting by the window, staring blankly out into the garden. He wasn't taking his son's disappearance well, to say the least. It was clear that he partially blamed himself for Eren "running away".

"I'm home," she said quietly. "Nile said he was-"

"I know." Levi didn't turn around to answer her. "I've been trying to think of ways to get out of it all day."

"I still don't know why you hate him," Mikasa said, walking into the kitchen to get something to eat. She lifted the tin foil off a casserole dish and peered underneath. "What is this?"

"Mrs Wasem brought it round. Your seventh grade teacher. Just be grateful it's not another shitty casserole."

At the very least, they didn't need to worry about cooking for the next couple of weeks. Every single one of the neighbours had brought around some oven-baked dish. 

"She made sure it was kosher, too," Levi continued.

"She knows we're agnostic, right?" Mikasa asked, cutting a slice of the bake and putting it in a microwave bowl.

"Who cares, she made us food and it isn't a casserole."

"I guess so," Mikasa said. She put the food in the microwave, and when it was done sat down at the kitchen table, silently eating the meal. "Are you going to eat anything?"

Levi shook his head. "I ate earlier. Four-Eyes came around with Thai."

"Hanji was here?" Mikasa asked. The woman was one of Levi's oldest living friends, and was a sort of vodka aunt - loud, drunk, and always eager to share her conspiracy theories. Mikasa wasn't sure she liked Hanji.

The front door opened again, and they heard the squeak of shoes on linoleum flooring. Erwin was back from work. 

"Hey, gang," he said gently as he walked into the kitchen. He looked exhausted, but still smiled at his husband and daughter. He sat down next to Levi and kissed his cheek. 

"How was work?" Levi asked flatly, closing his eyes and leaning onto his shoulder. Someone who didn't know him would assume that he was bored; however, Mikasa had lived with him for eleven years and she knew that this was him letting down his guard. He only did it around the people he really cared about - Erwin, that was for sure, and probably Hanji, and occasionally her and Eren. 

Erwin sighed and stroked his hair. "Lots of people telling me they felt sorry for us. It was exhausting."

Levi hummed. "There's food in the fridge. Reheat some if you're hungry."

"Have you eaten?" Erwin asked. Levi nodded. 

"He had Thai," Mikasa said. "Hanji brought it around."

"Oh, that's good. You can't not eat," he said, gently kissing the top of his head.

"I know," Levi said. He touched the side of his husband's face, smiled faintly, then stood up.

"I'm going to bed," he said.

"But it's only seven," Mikasa said. He gave her a glare, then walked down the hallway into his bedroom.

"It'd be a good idea to have an early night," Erwin said. Mikasa hummed absentmindedly in agreement. "What's on your mind?"

She didn't answer him. She just looked away. He knew exactly what she was thinking then. "They'll bring him home," he said. She still remained quiet, and held out his organic arm. "Come here."

Mikasa didn't hesitate, and hugged her father. It was comforting, being in the arms (or arm, really, he only had one) of an adult. It reminded her of when they had adopted her, and Erwin had assured her that they were going to look after her. It was the feeling of having responsibility lifted from her. She knew that being held wouldn't make anything better, but for this moment she could pretend.

"I know you're scared," he said. "But you don't need to be. They're going to find Eren. He'll come back soon enough."

The words weren't reassuring. They were the exact same words that every other adult had told Mikasa in the days since Eren's disappearance. She didn't argue with Erwin, however. He was trying to make her feel better.

She let him hold her for a few more minutes, before detaching and grabbing her plate to clean it up. He smiled at her, then opened the fridge to get leftovers.

"Hmm, should I have casserole, casserole or casserole? Maybe I'll have casserole."

"Mrs Wasem brought something around that wasn't casserole," Mikasa suggested. "Some Lebanese meal."

"Well, if it isn't casserole I'll try it out," he said, pushing the fridge door closed with his leg and putting the dish on the bench.

When her plate was clean, Mikasa put it back in the drawer. "I'm going into my room," she said. Erwin nodded.

When Mikasa got to her room, she collapsed on her bed and buried herself in the blankets. She wasn't going to cry. She'd cried enough in the past three days, and she wasn't sure that she had any tears left. She lay in bed for what felt like forever, before finally drifting off into the void.

\--

Mikasa woke, suddenly, when her phone went off on her bedstand. She reached over and grabbed it, seeing that it was Armin who had called her. 

They were friends by circumstance: Armin and Eren had been best friends ever since he'd moved in with the Reisses (the way they were related was confusing, but the basic gist was that Armin had been adopted at birth, but when his adoptive family died his biological family took him in). Since Eren spent so much time with him, Mikasa started to spend time with him as well. The three (occasionally four but his twin Historia had other friends) were inseparable.

Mikasa answered the phone. "Hello?"

"Mikasa. I know what happened to Eren." Armin's voice was rushed.

"What?" She sat up suddenly. "You know where he is?"

"No. I know what happened to him, but I don't know where he is."

"Why didn't you go to the police?" Mikasa asked, suddenly angry that her friend had been withholding information about her brother's disappearance. 

"They wouldn't have taken me seriously if I told them."

"What are you talking about, Armin?" Mikasa asked, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. She blinked the tears away.

"Look, just come over. I'll tell you everything I know about what happened."

Mikasa paused. "Alright," she said, hanging up the phone. She checked the time. 9 AM. She'd slept in.

She hurriedly got dressed and raced outside, without grabbing breakfast. She could eat at the Reiss house.

If Armin knew something about Eren's disappearance, then Mikasa had to know. Any scrap of information could help them find him.


	3. Hermit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armin and Mikasa enlist the help of the only person in town who can help them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay but did Rod Reiss's wife have a name or am I just gonna have to call her Linda

You could still see the crop circle from Armin's window, except by now it had been taped off by the police. Even though the evidence collection stage of the search was over, the yellow do not cross tape had been kept up to deter delinquents from coming in and messing around.

"I know what I saw," Armin said quietly. He was sitting on his bed, still in pyjamas, and staring out the window at the crop circle.

"I know, but it can't have been... You were hallucinating, or something." Mikasa stood in the middle of the room Armin shared with Historia, totally unbelieving what he had proposed. "It couldn't have been a UFO."

"Well, technically, anything's a UFO if you're bad enough at identifying flying objects," Armin said. "But that's not my point. My point is that-"

"That my brother was abducted by aliens? Is that what you're trying to tell me?" Mikasa asked. Armin gave her a grim smile, to which she replied with throwing her head back and whispering "oh my god."

"I know it's stupid. The police would never believe me. But you know as well as I do that he wouldn't run away, plus I saw it with my own eyes."

"You saw him get beamed up into a spaceship, like in Star Trek. I just- I can't believe that!"

"Then what can you believe?"

She remained silent, before changing the topic. "But say he did get abducted by aliens," Mikasa said, the words still feeling - well, alien, in her mouth. "What then? How do we go about bringing him home? No adult would believe us..."

She trailed off, and from the look on Armin's face knew that he was thinking the same thing.

"There is one person who would believe us," he said.

"No," Mikasa said, firmly. "We aren't going there. If you want you can go by yourself, but I'm not asking her-"

"She's your aunt," Armin said. "She'll let you in without hesitation, and it'll take way less time than it would for me to convince her to help me, some kid she hardly knows."

"But you could still convince her," Mikasa said. "I'm not going to her house, and that's final."

\--

Twenty minutes later, Armin and Mikasa stood outside of a ramshackle caravan surrounded by tall pine trees. The thing had no wheels, only bricks, and it had clearly seen better days.

"I'm not knocking," Mikasa said, arms folded.

"Coward," Armin said. He walked forwards and knocked on the metal door, which was almost immediately flung open by a woman in slippers and a lab coat with a pair of cracked glasses on top of her head.

"Who's there?" The woman shouted. She squinted. "Levi?"

"No, Hanji, it's me," Mikasa said flatly, her arms still crossed. Hanji pulled her glasses off her head, wiped them on her coat, and put them on. She smiled when she saw Mikasa.

"Mikasa! You came round to visit," she said, coming down the stairs so she was at the same level as the kids. "And you brought a friend."

"Hanji, this is Armin, he's Eren's... friend," Mikasa explained. Hanji smiled further.

"Well, if you're a friend then you're always welcome here," Hanji said. "So why did you kids come down to see me?"

"It's about..." Mikasa made eye contact with Armin, unsure of how to say it. "Look, you tell her. It was your idea anyway."

Armin took a deep breath. "Well, you know about what happened to Eren, right?"

Hanji nodded. "I heard all right. I was one of the first people they called, to make sure he hadn't come to my place. And I'm sorry, I really am. I know this must be hard for you."

"Yes, you're right. It is hard," Mikasa said bitterly.

"But we - I - wanted to talk to you about something I saw the night he disappeared."

"Armin thinks he saw him get abducted by aliens."

Hanji stood back, and took a moment to register what Mikasa had just said.

"If you didn't hear, she just said-"

"Yes, I heard what she said." Hanji walked up the stairs. "Come inside."

The interior of the caravan was just as messy as the exterior. Clothes were strewn across the bed, empty takeaway boxes littered the floor and any surface, and a whole wall was dedicated to a conspiracy board.

"What exactly did you see?" Hanji asked seriously. This felt out of character for her. Growing up, Hanji had always been the fun aunt who'd buy the kids alcohol. To see her suddenly serious felt wrong.

"Well, we were out in the barn," Armin explained. "He'd come over to my house after the argument. He went outside because of a headache, and then when I came out, he was standing in this beam thing. Then he disappeared."

"Did you see anything else?" Hanji pressed. She put her hands on his shoulders. "Anything at all?"

"Well... I could see the outline of something. Something big."

"Was it..?"

"Saucer shaped?"

They stared at each other.

"I knew it," she said. "I knew it! I was right!"

"About what?" Mikasa asked. "About aliens?"

"Look, do you remember - no, you wouldn't remember, you weren't even born yet - but seventeen years ago, a friend of mine went missing. I saw something take her away, but nobody ever believed me, not even your dads. Not even Erwin. And you really think that it was aliens?"

"Well, the alternative is the government but aliens makes more sense."

"Exactly." She turned to the wall. "Ever since then, I've been spending my days looking for some kind of sign, any kind of sign that what I saw wasn't a one off event. All I found were hoaxes and false leads - that is, until now." She turned back to them.

"Whatever it was that took my friend, took Eren."

\--

It felt wrong, not going to the police with this information. But, honestly, who would believe them?

Aliens. It couldn't have been aliens. Mikasa was just dreaming. She'd wake up, and Eren would be there, and it would have just been a dream and nothing more, because aliens didn't exist.

But as she sat on the fold-out bed amongst empty coffee cups and takeaway noodle boxes, watching her aunt and best friend draw a map of local UFO sightings, she almost doubted herself.

Maybe there was something out there. Something else. It was a welcoming thought - the idea that humans weren't alone in the universe after all.

"Hey, I remember something," Armin said. "Just before the abduction, Eren said that he had a headache, a really bad one. I don't know if it's connected or not-"

"Probably not," Mikasa butted in. "He's been having headaches for months."

Hanji held up a hand as if to silence her. "Headaches?"

Mikasa nodded.

Hanji snapped her fingers. "That has to mean something."

Yeah, it means he had migraines, she almost said. She didn't say it, though. She wasn't sure why. 

"Oh, wait!" Armin said. "A week ago, a thing crashed into the back paddock. I thought it was a drone, but it was weird and glowing. I think it's-"

"An alien drone?" Hanji finished. "Do you have it?"

"It's in the barn," he said.

\--

They got back to the Reiss farmhouse in the afternoon, boxes of evidence in their arms. They were going to set up in the barn, where the drone was. It was easier than carrying the drone up into the caravan park.

"Is your stepmother okay with us staying in the barn?" Mikasa asked.

Armin shrugged. "She'll be fine. No one even comes out here anyway." He set the box of photographs and string on the ground. "You guys start setting up, I left my phone in my room and I'm just going to get it."

They nodded to him, and he left them in the barn. He entered the house, trying to stay quiet as to not alert his family.

"Oh, you're back."

Shit.

Armin's stepmother stood in the kitchen doorway, holding her handbag.

"Yeah," he said. An idea blossomed in his mind. "Um, is it okay if my friend uses the barn for a school project?" He asked.

"You know what? Fine. It's not like any of us use it," she said, and he mentally wiped some sweat from his brow. "I'm going grocery shopping. Do you need anything?"

Armin shook his head. His stepmother smiled, and walked out of the house. He was lucky to have a stepmother so accepting of her late husband's bastard children.

When Armin was certain that she was gone, he ran up the stairs to his bedroom. He felt stupid for not bringing his phone with him to begin with. He opened his bedroom door, and inside was Historia. She was zipping up a suitcase.

"What... What are you doing?" He asked. She looked up at him.

"Oh. I'm just packing my bag."

"I can see that, why are you packing it?"

"Well, it's Ymir. She needs to look after her grandmother, and she wanted me to come with her."

Ymir was Historia's girlfriend. She was two years older than them, but had been held back a year, and was thus only in eleventh grade. She was... a delinquent, to say the least, but Historia loved Ymir and Ymir clearly loved Historia.

Upon hearing this news, Armin was in shock. Historia was leaving him? At a time like this?

"I'm sorry," Historia said, not needing to hear what he was thinking to understand it. The twins might have been separated for most of their lives, but they still had that sixth sense twins often had. "I shouldn't leave. Not while this is happening. But... She needs me too."

Historia stood up and walked to him, hugging him tightly.

"It's okay. I know how much she means to you," Armin said. "Just promise to call." He felt her nod. She let go, and picked up her suitcase.

"We aren't leaving until tonight. So we still have some time together."

He smiled at her as she left the room.

\--

"You took an awful long time to get your phone," Mikasa said when Armin came back into the barn. The pegboard had been set up on the wall, and the photographs were in the process of being pinned onto it.

"I ran into Linda. And then Historia. Did you know she and Ymir are leaving town?"

"At this time?" Mikasa asked.

"I know, that's what I thought. Apparently it's just coincidental," he said. He shoved his hands in his hoodie pocket, and looked away, blinking away tears that he didn't know were there.

"Hey." He felt a hand on his shoulder, and saw that it belonged to Hanji. She gave him a sad smile. "We're going to find a way to bring Eren back."

"I know," he said. "I just..." He made some gestures with his hands, and threw them down in frustration.

"I know what you mean," Mikasa said. They looked to her. "But we're going to bring him back, or at the very least beat some alien shit into a pulp."

Armin blinked. Mikasa rarely swore like that. It was a sign that she was angry. He looked into her eyes and his suspicions were confirmed: they were aflame with rage. Well, at least now she wasn't denying the existence of extra-terrestrials, so that was something.


	4. Dinner Party of Disaster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doks come over for tea, and Marie unknowingly reopens an old wound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know how many kids Nile has but i'm gonna assume it's 3

_One of us needs to go down there._

_What for? We have what we came for. We don't need to stay any longer._

_But we need to deal with the witness, not to mention collect the lost drone. If we leave them, we lose points. And, the_ _runaway-_

_Oh, you with your runaway queen! That was never a part of this mission._

_But she's on this planet. If we're here, then why not take a detour and detain her as well? We won't lose points for leaving witnesses, and we'll get extra points for bringing in the queen as well._ _Win-win._

\--

After an afternoon spent in the barn, Mikasa decided to head home. It was Sunday, after all, and even though she'd had last week off, she had to go back to school at some point.

The house was quiet when she got home. She guessed that her dads were out. She didn't blame them. Without Eren, the house felt empty.

It wasn't like it was before they had adopted him. They had made space for him in their family, and now he was gone, the space hadn't retracted.

Mikasa hadn't eaten since the bowl of cereal she'd had at Armin's house, so she went into the kitchen and looked through the fridge. She was _not_ having casserole for lunch again, so she grabbed one of the apples in the fruit draw.

If her dads were out, she thought as she ate the apple, that meant she had the whole house to herself. She could do whatever she wanted - not that she really wanted to do anything outlandish anyway. That just wasn't her thing.

Maybe she could listen to music without headphones. Or watch whatever she wanted on the TV without judgement. Like, porn maybe, but she wasn't really into that sort of thing. Those stupid daytime documentaries about conspiracy theories that Erwin loved, perhaps.

And then she stopped, and thought about it more, and wondered if he had any about aliens.

She ran to open the DVD cabinet in the lounge room, and looked through his collection. Aha. A DVD case labelled _Alien Abductions: The Truth is Out There._ It was probably a whole lot of bullshit, but if aliens were real and had abducted her brother, then it was best she do some research.

She was right in that the documentary was bullshit. Many of the interviewees were crippled with paranoia, "the moon landing was faked," "vaccines cause autism," "the president is a lizard" types. But she watched on, in the hopes that something of value would come up.

When Mikasa heard footsteps coming down the hallway, she frantically paused the movie.

"Levi, I, I didn't realise you were home," she said. He gave her a deadpan stare, looked at the TV screen, and back to her with disappointed eyes.

"Really?" He asked.

"It's for - entertainment. To see how stupid it was. I don't actually-" she fake-laughed "- you didn't think I believed in aliens, did you?"

Levi seemed to believe her. "I was scared for a second. At least one of my friends isn't fucking nuts."

"Yeah." Mikasa ejected the DVD and put it back in its case.

"Are you ready for tonight?" he asked sarcastically, picking up one of the couch cushions that had been left on the floor and putting it back on the couch. Mikasa blanked. What was happening tonight?

Oh, yeah. The Doks were coming over for tea.

"No, I forgot," she answered.

"I _wish_ I could forget," Levi said. "His stupid kids are going to be rubbing their snot all over the furniture. Do you remember last time they came over? One of them lost a tooth and bled on Eren's bedcover."

"We had to put it through the wash three times." Mikasa smiled at the memory. Levi grimaced, however.

"If I just leave, do you think I can get out of it?" Levi asked.

"Erwin wouldn't appreciate it," she said. Levi sighed.

"Fine." He collapsed on the couch next to her. "Erwin's gone out to get groceries. Where were you all morning?"

"At Armin's house," Mikasa answered simply. Then to Hanji's place, then back. She wouldn't even need to work out today.

"Great. I'm going to shower," he said, standing up and leaving the room. Mikasa decided she needed to prepare herself for the dinner.

\--

"Look, we have to be on our _best_ behaviour," Erwin said, straightening Levi's collar. "I'm talking to you, Levi. For two hours, can we just all get along?"

"I'll get along if he gets along," Levi said, through clenched teeth.

"Alright then." He quickly kissed Levi on the cheek, then turned to open the door and let the Doks in.

"Hello!" The family was all smiles and happy greetings, which Erwin gladly returned. Levi and Mikasa stood to the side, neither being sociable in the slightest.

"I'm so sorry about Eren," Marie said, sweetly. She handed Mikasa a covered oven tray. "We made a casserole."

"Thanks," Mikasa said, barely hiding her disgust.

"And look at how much you've grown!" Erwin said, ruffling the hair of the youngest Dok child, a toddler boy in Nile's arms. "You'd be what, four now?"

The boy just stared at Erwin's prosthetic arm.

"Well, let's come in. We can't keep standing in the doorway all night," he joked.

"Oh, yes, a wonderful idea," Marie agreed. "Come on, kids."

The older two kids let their mother shepherd them into the dining room. Marie seemed inebriated already, and Mikasa was jealous that she couldn't do the same thing. Maybe this night would be bearable with the aid of alcohol.

Mikasa reminded herself yet again why she wasn't having kids.

"Do you play any video games?" the eldest child, a ten year old girl, asked in a nasally tone.

"Sometimes."

"Like Fortnite?"

Mikasa shuddered inwardly at the very mention of the word. "No."

"That's lame," the other kid said. He was maybe seven, and spoke with his mouth full of food. Mikasa looked sideways to see Levi glaring at the child with death in his eyes.

"So, Mikasa, sweetheart, what have you been up to?" Marie asked. Over the course of the night, she'd been downing wine like nobody's business.

Nile touched her shoulder. "Honey, she's going through a lot right now," he stage whispered. Marie waved his hand away.

"Well let's not focus on that tonight!" Marie laughed. "So. Mikasa. Do you have a boyfriend yet?"

 _"I can't believe you were going to marry that woman,"_ Mikasa heard Levi whisper.

"Um... No," Mikasa answered. She felt her face heat up as she did so.

"Oh, that's understandable," Marie laughed. "Why would you want the company of _another_ boy when you have three at home?"

This was the last straw. Mikasa stood up, the chair falling to the ground. "I need to - to go to the toilet."

She left the dining room just before the tears started. She ran into her room and slammed the door shut. She slid down the door, curled up in a ball and sobbed.

At least half an hour passed before a soft knocking came at her door.

"Can I come in?" Erwin asked. Mikasa moved out of the way so that he could open the door. He looked at her laying on the floor, eyes red, and sighed in pity. He sat down next to her.

"What's wrong?" he asked. Mikasa shook her head, and he sighed again. "I know you're messed up over Eren. Nile's on the case, he's going to find him, okay?"

Mikasa sobbed again, and Erwin put his arm around her shoulder.

She wanted to tell him what the real reason for her outburst was, but she couldn't find the right words. Plus, she didn't want to derail the conversation. She didn't have time today.

Erwin kissed the top of her head, and stood up. "I left Levi down there with the Doks, I'd better go and make sure he doesn't kill them."

He took one last look at his daughter, and left to go and intervene downstairs.

Wiping her eyes, Mikasa stood up and walked to her bedside, where she'd left her phone. She opened up messenger and texted Armin.

_Me: Hows the research - 7:49_

_Son: Great! We've found loads of sightings over the past few years. - 7:50_

_Son: You should come around tomorrow after school. - 7:50_

_Me: maybe - 7:51_

_Son: oh yeah, how's the dinner party? You said that was tonight, didn't you? - 7:52_

_Me: Its bad - 7:52_

_Son: Really? oof. - 7:52_

_Me: what about Historia - 7:53_

_Son: yeah, she left this afternoon. At least it's one less person to walk in on our evidence barn! - 7:54_

_Me: hey quickly can I tell you something-_

Mikasa typed out the sentence, but she didn't send it. Her heart raced, and she backspaced until the message was gone. She wished Eren was here. She wouldn't have any trouble telling _him_ her secrets. Whether he'd take her seriously or not was up for debate, but at least she could tell somebody. She hated bottling everything up inside her, but she couldn't tell anyone. She'd be... she'd be weak. She'd be called all manner of things; an attention whore, a copycat, "proof". And if the person she told told anyone else, it'd be just like Japan again.

A year ago, a relative of her biological mother had offered to house her for an exchange year. After some nudging from her family, she'd accepted. She'd only lasted a semester before coming home and refusing to tell anybody about the trip. That was when she decided not to tell anybody that wasn't Eren about her secrets ever again.

And now he had been abducted by aliens. To think, a year ago Mikasa's only worry was that her schoolmates in America would turn on her, and now her brother had been kidnapped by aliens. Why aliens? At least the police would have been able to track down something mundane like human traffickers. But aliens? No way.

The sound of a car pulling out of their driveway made Mikasa know that the Doks had left. It was safe to go back downstairs, which she did.

"What the hell was that all about?" Levi asked as soon as she came downstairs.

"I'm just getting some water and then I'm going to bed," she answered flatly.

"I guess now you know why I hate them. Did you see that brat? He was dribbling casserole down his shirt like some sort of farm animal."

Mikasa walked straight past him into the kitchen, and got a glass of water.

"Do you want to talk about whatever Marie said that made you run off?" He asked.

"No," she said, barely keeping her voice steady.

"Good. I can't talk about feelings for shit." Levi rubbed at his eyes with his sleeve. "I'm going to bed."

"Wait-" Mikasa said. Levi looked at her with a 'what do you want now?' expression.

"What?"

"When you- when you were in highschool- did anyone ever bully- tease you about, about-"

"I dropped out of highschool," Levi deadpanned.

"Did anyone bully you for being gay?" Mikasa said, finally, glad to get the words out of her mouth.

"Pan," Levi corrected, "and no. I never told anyone. Nobody found out until I got married."

"Oh. Alright," Mikasa said, only mildly disappointed with the answer. She drank her water, then put it in the sink before going to bed and sleeping the whole night.


	5. Runaway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elsewhere, Historia wakes up to find her girlfriend sneaking out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two updates in a row? From me? It's more likely than you think. 
> 
> Since this chapter was so small I decided to smack you in the face with it sooner rather than later. Plus, thank you to all the people who've commented and left kudos! I read every single one of your comments, even if I don't respond to them, and I love seeing them.

That same night, in a motel across the state, Historia opened her eyes. Her vision was blurry. She noticed, even in her tired state, that beside her in the bed was empty. She propped herself up with her elbow, and wiped the sleep from her eyes.

"Ymir?"

The girl in question was standing by the door, hand on the knob. Upon hearing her girlfriend's call, she turned around. She had a startled expression.

"What's wrong, baby?" Historia continued.

"Nothing to worry about," Ymir gently whispered. She walked back over to the bed, and sat down next to Historia. "Just go back to sleep."

Historia noticed that Ymir was wearing a jacket and had her shoes on.

"Are you going out?" She asked, accusingly.

"I told you, it's nothing, just checking up on something," Ymir said, with less patience.

"No, enough!" Historia snapped. "You dragged me halfway across the state, right when my twin needs me, I haven't seen hide or hair of your grandmother, and now you're sneaking out? Tell me the truth, Ymir!"

Ymir recoiled. Her girlfriend had always been quite mild mannered, but now she could see she was at the end of her tether. She couldn't keep lying to her.

"You want the truth?" Ymir asked. Historia kept her determined expression. "I'll give you the truth."

Historia sat up straight and wiped her hair out of her face. Ymir took a deep breath. "This is gonna sound crazy," she said with a laugh. Historia wasn't laughing with her, so she cut to the chase.

"I don't have a grandmother. The reason why I brought you here was to keep you safe."

"From what?"

"Look, I'm being hunted down by the government of a place I'd rather forget. And it turns out, that place is an entire planetary system."

Historia was silent from shock. Then, she gave a nervous, disbelieving laugh.

"You're joking, right? Tell me that you're joking."

Ymir gave her a grim smile. "If only I was."

Historia looked down at the bedsheets. "No. You- you can't be, god, you can't just be an _alien_."

"Yeah, well, we can't chose our origins," Ymir said with a shrug that hid how much she was panicking.

"You can't be an alien, because that would mean that I- That I lost my virginity to a motherfucking _alien_."

"Baby, I-"

"Don't "Baby" me! You're an alien, and you never told me!" Historia shouted.

"Of course I never told you, you'd carry on like this and/or hand me in to the government!"

They had a stare-off for a minute, silence fueled by rage.

"Okay, fine," Historia said, finally. "So you're an- an alien. Alright. How did you even get here in the first place?"

"Escaped persecution," Ymir said. "Nicked a shuttle, crashed here. Got taken in by a couple on a farm nearby. Don't know if they're still living there, though."

"You came here on a shuttle?"

"Yeah. That was what I was going to check up on." Ymir shuffled awkwardly.

"You know that going back to the crash site of your UFO is going to get you arrested by the Men in Black, right?" Historia said.

Wow. After that initial dispute, she was actually being quite open minded about the whole alien thing.

"Yeah, but... I hid that shuttle well. And I need to get some stuff from it."

Historia glared at her, and threw off the bedcovers. She stood up to her full height (which was not that tall), her back straight (the straightest she would ever be), and picked up her jacket from where she had left it on the ground.

"If you're going, then I'm coming with you."

What could Ymir say to that face? No? That was how they ended up outside in the desert night, walking past rocks and trying not to step on any nocturnal animals that scuttered past.

"Hey, just out of curiosity, does knowing that I'm, well, an alien change anything?" Ymir asked.

"I mean, not really," Historia said. "I'm more mad that you lied to me about it."

"Oh, that's good," she said. "I thought something like that would drive a wedge in our relationship."

"I guess the only thing that _really_ changes is that we won't legally be able to marry, because you aren't a citizen. Though I guess you've been going to school with a fake ID, so that doesn't matter."

"You know I love you, right?" Ymir asked. "More than anything in the world. Anything in the universe. And if anything ever happened to you, I would die."

"Please don't die," Historia said. "Because we're going to get married after this, right? Isn't that what you told me during that PE lesson in eighth grade?"

Ymir smiled, tears in her eyes. "You remembered!" She said, enveloping her in a hug.

Historia smiled as well, and hugged her girlfriend back. "Of course I remember. That was the thing you said that made me realise that you might actually like me."

""Might" like you? I asked you to marry me!"

"What can I say, I'm a useless lesbian." She laughed and kissed Ymir on the lips.

"Wait up," Ymir said, pushing Historia away. She didn't want to. She wanted to kiss under the stars for just a moment longer. "We're close."

Historia stood back. "Really?"

Ymir nodded. "Just a few more metres this way."

They walked in silence for a few more minutes, before they came to a large rock, roughly the size of a small car. It seemed out of place in the flat expanse of desert. Ymir approached it, then kicked the side. It made a metallic sounding thud, like the noise a metal drum might make if you kicked it. And then the rocky disguise fell, and Historia was looking at what looked like something out of _Star Wars._

" _This_ is what you stole?" Historia said in awe. "No wonder you're being hunted down by your government."

"What, this? This is like the Ford Escort of spacecraft," Ymir said with a laugh. She turned back to it, and searched around for something. "Aha," she said, hitting a part of the shuttle. A door flew open, and Ymir climbed in.

"Do you need any help?" Historia called.

"Nah, baby, I got this," Ymir shouted back.

Historia turned around, shoving her hands in the pockets of her jacket, when a bright light shot her in the face. She covered her eyes with an arm.

 _Oh, crap,_ she thought. They'd been caught out by police or the FBI or security - just as she'd thought.

"Ymir!" She shouted. Her girlfriend jumped out of the shuttle and ran to her, grabbing the arm that wasn't covering her face.

"Come on, we gotta go!" Ymir shouted. She pulled Historia away, and she took down her arm. That was when she saw a faint outline of something in the light.

"That's not-" Historia started, but never finished, because Ymir pushed her to the ground. She hit the ground with a thud. She looked where Ymir was, and saw that she was standing, arms spread as if in surrender. And then she saw her completely dematerialise.

"What the hell?!" She shouted. She jumped up, and ran directly in front of the source of the light. "What did you do to her?"

In the middle of the light appeared a figure. Historia's heart pounded in her chest.

"Who are you?" She asked again.

The figure walked closer, and Historia could see that it was clothed head to toe in what looked like motorcycle gear, not that much taller than her. It looked her up and down, then spoke into its wrist, in a language that Historia couldn't recognise. It waited a moment before speaking again, then stood up straight.

"You're coming with me," it said, in English.

At this, Historia tried to run, but she felt herself freeze, and then the awful sensation of being torn apart as the world around her disappeared.


	6. Monday Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armin finds records of unidentified lights that coincide with the night Carla Jaeger died, Mikasa is skeptical, and things start to get serious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys enjoy the chapter!

The desert landscape was silent. There was only crickets, birds, and the occasional rodent scurrying by. The alien stood out like a sore thumb in her pseudo-motorcycle gear. She looked around herself, at the desert and the ruined escape capsule and then up to the sky, which was devoid of the spacecraft that had been there seconds ago. For a moment, she stood in disbelief - it couldn't be true, her comrades would realise their mistake and come back any second, she wasn't going to be stranded on this shithole planet - but finally she understood what had happened.

The silence of the night was broken by the alien swearing, quite loudly, in her native tongue.

\--

It wasn't like Mikasa _wanted_ to procrastinate on her work. But, try as she might, she just couldn't focus. The teacher was talking, now, but she couldn't hear what he was saying. Her seat was right next to the window, which had a direct view of the football field. There was a class out there. Mikasa watched them running from one end to another, and could hear the cheer whenever a goal was scored. The walls weren't thick.

But she wasn't really focused on the game, either. She kept replaying everything that she'd learned yesterday. Eren had been abducted by aliens. Aliens, which were real, and not just a conspiracy theory. And, on top of all that, the comment Marie had made stuck in the back of her mind, and that would bring back memories of her Japan exchange, and every time Mikasa thought about her exchange she would feel physically unwell. With both of these things piling up, she just couldn't focus on anything.

"...Mikasa?"

She snapped to attention. The teacher and half the class were staring at her.

"What year was the Berlin Wall toppled?" The teacher asked.

"Um..." Mikasa flipped through her notes. "1991. The year the Soviet Union fell."

"Incorrect!" The teacher said, and Mikasa felt her face heat up. "The wall fell in 1989."

After class, Mikasa gathered up her books to leave, but the teacher stopped her.

"I wanted to have a talk with you. Can you sit, please?"

She took a seat opposite his desk. "I'm sorry, about earlier. I promise I'll try harder tomorrow-"

"You don't have to apologise," the teacher said. "I understand that now would be a tough time for you, being that your brother has... it must be difficult. But you can't let that get in the way of your schoolwork forever."

"Okay, I won't," Mikasa said, standing up.

"You're one of my best students, Mikasa," the teacher said as she left. "I don't want to lose your brain."

\--

Mikasa normally sat with Eren at lunch, but as he was gone, she just sat with Armin.

"Do you still have soccer practice at lunch?" Armin asked. Mikasa nodded.

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Oh, it's just that you've been distracted lately. No, don't stop doing soccer."

They didn't talk about Eren, or the alien-hunting. It just wasn't the time or place for it. When she'd finished eating, Mikasa stood up.

"I've got to go. To soccer practice."

Armin nodded, and waved her away.

"Hey, Mikasa's back!" The first person to notice her when she entered the soccer team's meeting room was Sasha Braus, a weedy girl who Mikasa had first befriended in middle school, after she'd given her half a snickers bar. Sasha had followed Mikasa around like a lost puppy for weeks afterwards.

"Yeah, we missed you, Ackerman," Connie Springer, Sasha's best friend, said. Mikasa didn't know him all that well, but he seemed like a friendly guy. He was also the best goddamn goalie on this side of the river.

"I was starting to think that you weren't coming back," said Jean Kirstein, in his usual cocksure voice. He was, frankly, full of himself, though since his friend Marco had moved halfway across the country, he had humbled down significantly. His crush on Mikasa was one of the school's worst-kept secrets, and if it wasn't for his soccer skills, Mikasa wouldn't want anything to do with him.

"No amount of trauma is going to stop me from kicking Stohess Catholic's ass next Saturday," Mikasa said, and the others cheered. She smiled, and sat down. "So are we training today?"

Sasha shook her head. "Coach is off sick."

"What, and you couldn't tell us this before we came down to the gym?" Jean exclaimed. He grabbed his bag and threw it over his shoulder. "Sorry about your brother," he said to Mikasa as he left.

"Yeah, so like, how is your family holding up?" Sasha asked, when Jean had left the room. Mikasa looked down and wrapped her scarf around herself again. "So not good?"

She shook her head. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Hey. That's okay. She shouldn't have to talk about her trauma if she doesn't want to."

Mikasa looked at Connie. As said before, she didn't know him, but she remembered last year, his mother had died. She didn't know much about the situation, but she knew he'd been off school for a week and had barely been the same since. She silently thanked him for his sympathy.

The rest of the day passed in a blur. Mikasa caught the bus home, and stared absentmindedly out the window the whole time. She nearly missed her stop because of it.

In silence, she walked home. She missed having Eren beside her, venting about his school day while she listened and gave advice. It was a silence that bore into her, hollowing her from the inside out.

She felt like she ought to be relieved to get back home, but the hollow feeling didn't leave then. She just dumped her bag on her bedroom door, and flopped down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. She wasn't sure how long she sat there, but at some point she opened Spotify and clicked on the first playlist to come up. Soon, the sweet and tender sounds of Florence + the Machine were playing, and she closed her eyes and lost herself in the music.

She hadn't ever really gotten into this artist before. Historia had recommended it to her, and she was glad for it because there was just something about the way the songs sounded that _got_ to her.

Her phone started ringing, and she jumped in shock. She pressed answer when she saw that Armin was calling her.

"What did you find?" she asked immediately.

"What? Oh. Actually, a lot. I was calling to see if you were coming over today."

Mikasa looked at the time on her alarm clock. "I can come around," she said. "Give me twenty minutes."

\--

She'd jogged her way to Armin's house, leaving a note on the kitchen table for her dads. They'd understand. They might even be glad that she was spending time with friends. The jog took shorter than she had expected, only seventeen minutes. Mikasa had improved her time.

She knocked on the door when she arrived. It was soon opened by Armin's stepmother, who looked Mikasa up and down before calling Armin to tell him his friend was here.

"Thank you, Mrs Reiss," Mikasa said.

The woman smiled at her. "Please, call me Linda."

Armin soon came down from his room, thanking Linda and pulling Mikasa towards the barn.

"What was it you found?" Mikasa asked. Armin seemed to be bursting with excitement, but he remained silent until they got into the barn, when he turned around and faced her.

"Alright. So, last night, Hanji and I researched other UFO sightings from the area. And what we found..."

"What did you find?" Mikasa snapped. Armin led her to the wall where they'd set up the pegboard, and pulled down several sheets of paper. He put them on the table in the centre of the room, and spread them out. Mikasa picked one of them up.

"Unidentified lights from Shiganshina observatory," Mikasa read, looking at the caption of the photograph. She knew the observatory. It was just outside of the town Eren had grown up in; she'd been to his birthday party there one year. She put the photo down, and picked up another. "Meteorological event, Shiganshina. Identified as lightning storm."

She turned to Armin, who was smiling at her expectantly.

"What does this mean?" She asked, impatiently.

"Look at the dates. Do they look familiar to you?"

Mikasa looked at the dates on the photographs. The first was from around twenty years ago, the second from about eight.

"The second photo coincides with the date that Eren's mother died," Armin explained.

"Yeah. She died when lightning struck the house and it collapsed on top of them. They lived out of town, so the firefighters couldn't get to them in time."

"How do we know that it wasn't aliens who were responsible for Mrs Jaeger's death, and have come back to finish the job? Like you said, the Jaegers lived outside of town, so no one saw what really happened. Plus, Eren told me that somebody killed his parents. It adds up."

Mikasa shook her head. "You're full of shit."

"It makes perfect sense, Mikasa!" Armin exclaimed.

"You say that Eren was abducted by aliens, and now you say his mother was killed by them? Just stop! Leave me alone!"

With that, Mikasa stormed out of the barn and walked back home.

\--

Levi heard Mikasa come home, because she slammed the front door shut. He didn't get up from his desk to shout at her;

"Don't slam the door!"

She didn't answer him. All he heard was mild sobbing and her heavy footsteps as she stormed upstairs. He put aside the university textbook that was open on his desk, and sighing, stood up. He didn't want to be the one to talk to her.

Tiredly, he left the office and went upstairs. He knocked on Mikasa's door.

"Are you okay?" He asked. He was met only with sniffling. "I'm downstairs if you need anything."

On his way downstairs, Levi took a look at the clock. Erwin should have been home half an hour ago. He hadn't received any texts from his husband, but he knew what they would say. _Tough day at the office. Staying late. Love you xxx._

It was his own way of coping. Each member of the family had their own way of dealing with grief, healthy or not. Mikasa cried in her room. Levi soldiered on and didn't look back. Erwin worked himself to death.

Levi almost felt like calling Erwin at his job, just to hear his voice, but decided that that went into "pathetic" territory. He wasn't like that.

As he walked down the hallway, he saw the framed photograph on one of the countertops. His wedding photo. The one where he was smiling. The photographer had somehow managed to catch him when he was distracted; Erwin had been flirting with him, whispering all manner of outlandish promises into his ears. Stupid shit like, making him breakfast every morning and promising to buy a star and name it after him.

"But most of all," he'd said, after the camera had clicked, "I promise to make you smile like this every day."

And, to this day, Erwin still tried his best every day to make him smile whenever possible. A quick kiss before work. Distracting the kids to keep him sane. Holding his hand while they watched the sky together.

Almost ashamed of himself, Levi took out his phone and called Erwin, just to hear his voice.

\--

The next day at school was as boring as the day before. Mikasa ignored Armin, still mad at him. She had soccer practice, Jean flirted with her, and more people gave their condolences. It wasn't until an announcement called her to the office in the final period that the day started to get interesting.

She was directed into a meeting room, where she saw Mrs Reiss, Armin, and two of his half-brothers (she knew that one was in their grade and the other was a senior, but had never bothered to learn their names) sitting in chairs. Each of them had a concerned expression on their face, but the thing that shocked Mikasa the most was that Nile Dok sat on the other side of the table.

"What's going on?" Mikasa asked. It was Mrs Reiss who spoke.

"They found Ymir's car," she said, slowly, her voice shaking. "But they couldn't find the girls."


	7. Hunted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something is coming. Something that might just be the key they need to find and rescue Eren.

There was nothing the alien could use in the queen's craft. She was going to have to go back to the doctor's house, and see what she could salvage there. She was a long way away from there, though, and it was a good thing she had spare rations and a first aid kit on her, otherwise she would be totally screwed.

God. She couldn't believe that that her crew had left her behind on this shithole planet.

And then, she stopped in her tracks. She had remembered something about the witness that had been bugging her. The testosterone levels. They didn't just change so rapidly in humans over the course of a few days. That left two options: the witness was more than human, or they had abducted the wrong person and the real witness was still out there.

She had _told_ her crew that they had the wrong person when they had abducted the human. But no, they hadn't listened. They'd spent "too long down here" (even though they had taken a detour to get that damned runaway queen) and had to make the trip as quick as possible.

Lucky that the doctor's home was close to where the witness lived. She had to get to the witness before they did something.

\--

Mikasa sat on the hard plastic chair in the meeting room, hands in her lap and avoiding eye contact with Armin. She was still mad about the events of the night before.

"And you received a text from Historia at eleven-thirty on Sunday night?" Nile asked.

Armin nodded. "She said she'd stopped at the motel. They were staying the night."

"Thank you." Nile scribbled down something in his notebook. "Did either of the girls seem... off, to you?"

"No," Mrs Reiss said almost immediately, as if the very idea of the question was stupid.

"No way," one of the half-brothers said, at the same time.

"Absolutely not!" Armin said, in unison with the other two. Mikasa stayed quiet.

"I mean, kinda."

Everyone looked to the half-brother who had spoken. It was the younger one.

"What are you talking about?" Mrs Reiss asked. He shrugged.

"I dunno. Ymir's always been weird. It's crazy that she has to go look after her sick aunt the day after Armin's friend gets kidnapped. I didn't even know she had an aunt."

"Her grandma," Armin corrected. "It was her grandma."

His half-brother looked confused. "I thought she was looking after her aunt."

"Yeah, I thought it was her aunt as well," the other half-brother said. Mrs Reiss looked at her sons.

"I could have sworn it was her grandmother who was sick," she said. All the while, Nile was writing in the notebook.

"Alright, aside from that, was there anything to suggest that either girl was up to something?"

They all shook their heads or said "no", yet again. Nile dismissed them, and they all left the room. By now, classes had ended.

"Mikasa, sweetheart, do you want me to drop you home?" Mrs Reiss asked, as she unlocked her mini-van.

"Um. Okay," Mikasa said, and climbed into the van. She sat next to Armin. He looked like he was going to talk to her, but she ignored him. "Wait, can I come home to your place?"

Mrs Reiss looked at her in the rear-view mirror.

"That's okay, right?" Mikasa asked, for confirmation.

"Oh, that's fine. Just tell your parents you're staying for tea," Mrs Reiss said, and focused back on the road. Armin looked at Mikasa, and she gave him a "we'll talk later" look.

\--

Judy's Truckstop was in a sleepy place. It was located about half an hour by car from the nearest town, and even that barely constituted as a town. Hardly anyone lived there. Kelly, the cashier, was one of those people. There weren't even really any farms out here either, as there was a distinct lack of life out this far in the desert. The only signs of life were the truckers who came in for a sleep, fill-up and a meat pie.

The bell jangled as the door opened, and Kelly looked up from her magazine. The customer was shorter than average, and covered head-to-toe in motorcycle gear. Kelly looked out the door, but couldn't see a motorbike.

"Can I help you with anything?" She asked. The motorcyclist stood as stoically as they had a second ago. "You payin' for fuel?"

"Where do you keep your transportation," the motorcyclist asked. it wasn't in an asking tone, however. It was a demand.

"Are you one of those Youtube pranksters?" Kelly asked.

"Where is your transportation?" the motorcyclist asked again, pulling a gunlike object and holding it to Kelly's head. She froze.

"My car's out the back," Kelly stammered. The motorcyclist removed the gun, then walked around to the back of the store. When they were gone, Kelly ran to the payphone and called for the police. They would come some time later, and Kelly would report the incident, but they would find nothing. The motorcyclist, or rather, the alien, would be long gone.

\--

"What the hell happened?" Mikasa asked Armin. They stood in his room, waiting for Mrs Reiss to finish cooking dinner.

"They said it was like Ymir and Historia had just left. Their stuff was in the motel, they didn't touch the car, they were just gone. They wouldn't answer their phones or anything, and nobody had seen them since they checked in. They just disappeared."

"Do you think it might have something to do with what happened to Eren?" Mikasa asked quietly.

"Of course! You heard what Florian said, it's strange that Ymir gets up and runs away the day after Eren gets abducted. And how she couldn't get her story straight, whether it was her aunt or grandma that was sick."

"That, or Ymir killed her and hid Historia's body in the desert," Mikasa said. Armin looked at her, offended.

"Have you met Ymir? She wouldn't lay a finger on Historia. She would _die_ before she let something happen to her."

"Okay, fine then. They ran away to Vegas and got married."

"Linda's been nothing but supportive of Historia being gay. She'd let them get married if they asked nicely, they wouldn't leave without telling us."

Mikasa stared at him head-on. "So let me guess. They were abducted by aliens too?"

"What else could have happened? It makes sense."

Mikasa frowned at Armin, and sat down. She couldn't think of a counter argument.

"Hey, kids! Dinner's ready!"

"That's Linda," Armin said. "We should go downstairs."

Mikasa nodded in agreement, and they walked downstairs for dinner.

"Sorry if it's not the best," Linda said as she placed a plate of lasagna on the table. "It's been a rough day."

"That's okay," Mikasa said. "It's not casserole." Linda smiled in response.

They ate dinner in near silence. Nobody knew what to say. Mikasa helped with the dishes, and Linda acted as if she was a godsend.

"Were you and Historia very good friends?" Linda asked.

"What do you mean?" Mikasa was caught off guard by the question. She hung out with Historia sometimes, but it was usually when Eren and Armin were too busy with each other, and anyways Mikasa had always been awkward around Historia. Historia was a cool girl. Before Eren had been adopted, Mikasa had wanted nothing more than to impress her. And when Eren had made friends with Armin, and subsequently Historia, Mikasa had made friends with them, and learned that Historia was actually a big nerd. She was still awkward with her, though.

Linda sighed. "Oh, I'm just a worried mother. She and Armin might not be mine, but... I'm all they have. Somebody has to be a good mother for her."

"Oh."

"Her biological mother - her and Armin's biological mother - she wasn't exactly mother of the year. And Rod was never all that warm to her either. Even I - even I treated her poorly for a few months. And then it turned out he'd had _another_ child with that woman." Linda swallowed back her tears. "I remember when we adopted Armin. He looked so much like his sister, you know? He was an adorable little thing."

"Right," Mikasa said. She finished drying up, and threw the tea towel on the bench. "I'm going to go upstairs now."

Linda nodded, and sat down and cried on the barstool.

\--

The alien ditched the stolen car outside the settlement where the doctor, and the witness, lived. She would find the house on foot. It was safer than taking it into town.

She walked the streets until the sun set, and she finally found the building the witness had been in. Her heart leaped, knowing that it was the right one. Silently, she pulled out her gun and walked towards the barn. Even if she couldn't get off this planet, she could at least tie up the loose end.

\--

Armin had brought Mikasa out to the barn to talk to her.

"I looked up Ymir's family," he said.

"And?"

"And, I couldn't find any trace of an aunt or grandmother, or any kind of relative."

"Obviously, this isn't the only time she's "disappeared" from a town," Mikasa said.

"Or she's an-"

"If you say that she's an alien, I'll tie you to- wait, what's that noise?"

"What are you talking about?" Armin asked. Mikasa put a finger to his lips.

"I heard something. Outside." She left the barn, Armin following her.

"There's nobody out here," Armin said. Mikasa ignored him, searching through the bushes. She didn't find anything. She turned around, and saw a dark figure holding a gun to Armin's head.

"Look out!" She shouted, pushing Armin out of the way and tackling the figure. She kicked the gun away into the grass, and put the person in a choke hold. It was hard, since they were in some weird motorcycle getup. The hold didn't last for long, and the motorcyclist was soon up, and pinned Mikasa on the ground. Mikasa rolled over, so the motorcyclist was on the ground instead. "Who the hell are you?" She asked. The motorcyclist didn't answer her, and kicked her in the stomach. They took the opportunity to escape, and stood up. They made a reach for the gun, but fell to the ground when a crowbar made contact with the side of their helmet.

Armin kicked their side, and looked to Mikasa. "They're unconscious."

Mikasa stood up, and looked at the would-be assassin. "We need to call Hanji," she said.


	8. Captive Audience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The alien wakes up, tied in the barn of the one who witnessed the abduction. She isn't happy. She was supposed to be the interrogator, not the interrogatee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for mentions of suicide.

They had tied the would-be assassin up in the barn with an unused extension cord, and placed them on a chair in the middle of the barn. Hanji had rushed over as soon as she heard. She was currently studying their motorcycle gear with extreme interest.

Armin, meanwhile, had dissected the gun, and was looking through the pieces.

"It's made from the same stuff as the drone," he said.

"So this is an alien?" Hanji asked. Her voice was bursting with excitement. "Why did you try and kill this kid, huh? Were you the one who abducted Eren? The one who abducted Ilse?"

"They're unconscious," Mikasa said. She was sitting on a bench, her arms crossed, staring daggers into the motorcycle gear.

"Well I know that," Hanji said. "Oh, my god. We have an alien!"

"You seem far too happy when that thing nearly killed me and Armin just now," Mikasa said.

"Look. This sort of thing is my life's work. I've dedicated years to finding one of these suckers, and you've got one tied up in your barn." Hanji leaned back over the alien, and inspected their helmet. "You busted up the helmet pretty good," she said, in a more serious tone.

Armin looked embarrassed. "Oh, it was nothing."

"No, either that armour was really bad or you swung really hard. I'm proud of you."

Armin looked at Mikasa, and smiled at the compliment. He didn't respond, because they were all distracted by a gasping noise coming from the alien. They had woken up.

"What are you- let me go!" The alien cried out. Their voice was feminine, and their breathing was rapid.

"No. What did you do to my brother?" Mikasa asked. Her voice was shaking with fury.

"Your brother?"

"My brother. The one _you_ abducted," she continued.

"His name is Eren, he's got brown hair and he's our age," Armin explained. "You might not think he's her brother, but that's because they're adopted."

The alien stayed still for a few seconds, and then answered. "You don't know anything."

Mikasa looked like she was going to assault the alien, but Armin put an arm in front of her.

"No. We don't know anything," he said calmly. "What did you do with Eren?"

The alien refused to speak.

"What did you do with him?!" Hanji screamed, slamming her hands down on the arms of the chair. The alien recoiled, and their breathing spiked up again. Her outburst even shocked Armin and Mikasa. Armin had only known her for a few days, but Mikasa had never seen Hanji snap like this.

"Look, spacekid," Hanji said, lowering her voice. "Right now, we have you tied up on a chair. We've taken your weapon. There's no way for you to escape. So, it would be a very good idea if you answered our questions. Now tell me, what did you do with Eren?"

The alien still remained silent.

"Oh, so we're going to be like that, are we?" Hanji said. "It would be a shame if I was to remove your helmet. You are the first alien we've ever seen, and I really don't want to kill you without learning anything."

The alien gave a sharp intake of breath, and shook their head.

"So, where did you take Eren?"

The alien did not answer, and Hanji grabbed the side of their helmet.

"No, no no no, please don't-"

But it was too late, and Hanji took the helmet off. She threw it on the ground.

Everyone was shocked. The alien was shocked because she found she could breathe the air. She took a gasp of air, then another, then more.

The others were shocked, because the alien looked just like a human. Her face had the right proportions (her nose was a bit bigger than average, but still human-passing), and she had hair. Admittedly, her skin and hair was a light blue, but aside from that, she could have been any person on the street. There were tears running down her face, and she was currently saying something in a language none of the humans could understand.

Hanji snapped her fingers. "Is your translator in the helmet?" She asked. The alien pointed to the helmet again, and Hanji picked it up.

"What if it's lying?" Mikasa asked. "What if we're giving it back one of its weapons?"

"Don't call people "it", Mikasa," Armin said. "Anyway, just look at her. Does she look like she's lying?"

Mikasa looked at the alien. She looked terrified.

"Fine." Mikasa crossed her arms.

Hanji smiled at her fondly. "God, you look just like Levi," she said, and Mikasa rolled her eyes. She turned back around, and dropped the alien's helmet back on her head.

"Now, Ms Alien," Hanji said. "Why don't you answer our questions now?"

A pause. And then:

"Why?"

"Because we _have_ you tied _up,_ " Armin said. "Plus, you're an alien. If I wanted, I could call NASA or the FBI right now and they would take you away and experiment on you. Or I could post a photo of you online, causing mass hysteria, in which case the government would still take you away."

The alien stayed still for a moment, before speaking.

"Please don't give me to the NASA," she said.

"We won't," Mikasa interjected, "if you also promise not to hurt Armin."

"I won't hurt any of you," the alien said. "I promise."

"Wonderful." Hanji clapped. "Now, are you going to answer our questions?"

"I will."

"First question. Why did you abduct my friend?" Armin asked.

"It's a long story."

"We have all night."

The alien sighed. "Fine. Many days ago a powerful superweapon was stolen from the empire."

"Days ago?"

"Empire?"

"The Marleyan empire. The government I serve. In charge of all developed solar systems in the galaxy. Our galaxy. Not your galaxy. And not days. The other one."

"Years?" Armin suggested.

"Yes. The weapon was stolen. For a long time the galaxy was searched for the culprit and the weapon, until we found that they were located here. On your earth. A team came to retrieve it, but they failed and were executed. We came back for it."

"And what does my brother have to do with the weapon?" Mikasa seemed to be getting more and more irritated as time went on.

"The weapon is in his bloodstream."

"What?" Mikasa asked in disbelief. "My brother doesn't have... He _doesn't_ have a weapon in him."

"See? You know nothing about anything. We abducted your brother so we could extract the weapon and return it to its rightful owners."

"When you say extract... He won't be hurt, will he?"

"No, the process will kill him."

Mikasa didn't hear what the alien said next, because she stormed out of the barn. She felt sick. The aliens were going to kill Eren, and this _bitch_ didn't even care. Eren was in space, and there was no way to get to him, and he was going to die.

She collapsed on the ground, and sobbed uncontrollably. She screamed in anguish, so hard that it hurt her throat. Eren was going to die. There was nothing she could do about it. She was never going to see him again. Never going to sit next to him in the back seat on long car trips. Never going to listen to him vent about school on the walk home. Never going to tell him why she left her Japan exchange early.

And she sobbed even harder, because the person she trusted most in the world was going to die, and she wouldn't even get a chance to say goodbye. Their last encounter was him telling them that they weren't his family.

She didn't see Hanji come out, but she did feel her out her arm around her and rub her back in comfort. She leaned on her shoulder and let out her tears there. Hanji didn't offer her any words of comfort; she knew that nothing she said would help.

"Do you want me to drop you home?" She asked quietly, when Mikasa had calmed down. She nodded, and Hanji picked her up (with some difficulty, she was pure muscle) and carried her to her car. It was a beat up old thing, in only slightly better shape than her caravan.

\--

It was eleven-thirty before they got home. Mikasa had barely stopped crying the whole car trip, and Hanji had to physically intervene and stop her from choking herself with her scarf. She'd wrapped it around herself so tightly that it had started to affect her breathing.

"Do you have your keys on you?" Hanji asked.

Mikasa shook her head. Hanji sighed. There went her plan to sneak in without alerting Erwin or Levi. She walked up to the door, and knocked.

They were waiting outside for some time before Erwin opened the door. They'd clearly woken him up, as he was in a loose t-shirt and without his prosthetic. He smiled when he saw Hanji, but that smile faded when he saw the state Mikasa was in. She immediately pushed past and ran upstairs. They heard a door slam, and a "don't slam the door!" In the distance.

"Is she okay?" Erwin asked, concerned. "What happened?"

Hanji looked at him tiredly. She didn't know how to tell him that they'd caught an alien.

"Oh, come in," he said. She followed him inside, and sat down on one of the kitchen barstools.

"Would you like some tea?" Erwin offered. She shook her head. "Was it about..?"

"Yeah," Hanji said.

He sighed. "We haven't told Mikasa this yet, but we think... We think Eren might have..."

"Might have what?" Hanji asked. Erwin seemed to be having trouble saying the words. It hurt, seeing his usually calm-happy expression gone. Erwin had always been the strong, loving father figure, and now it looked like his soul had been drained from him. That, or he just hadn't slept. He looked at her, and she knew what he was trying to say.

"You think Eren killed himself?" She whispered.

Erwin nodded. "Do you remember when he broke his leg because he accidentally fell out of a tree? It wasn't an accident."

Hanji remembered that. That had been when Mikasa had done her exchange year in Japan.

"They took him off his antidepressants, a few weeks before he ran away. The doctor said they were probably affecting his hormones. And the night he ran away, we had an argument. I don't even remember how it started, but just before he left, he told us that our opinions on his life didn't matter because we weren't his blood family. God, I hope I'm wrong. I hope Eren's out there somewhere. Even if he has been kidnapped or if he's out on the streets, because at least then he's alive. I couldn't bear the thought of him dying and the last thing he ever said to us was that we weren't family."

Hanji wanted to tell her friend that she knew where Eren was. She wanted to tell him that he was safe. But she couldn't. It was a lie. Eren was going to die, and Erwin wouldn't believe her anyway.

"Thank you for bringing her home," Erwin continued. "I wouldn't be able to bear it if something happened to her. We need to be with each other now more than ever before."

Hanji hummed in agreement. She wished she had had a family to go to for comfort when Ilse had been abducted. But _Ilse_ had been her comfort, her shoulder to cry on, the first person she had come out to.

"I'm sure he'll show up soon," Hanji lied. Erwin smiled a sad smile, and she felt guilty hiding the truth from him. But he couldn't know. "Look after Mikasa."

He nodded. "We're going to get through this," he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes that's Annie. She doesn't give them her name for like,, 8 chapters. That's because her giving them her name corresponds with her and Mikasa starting to fall in love. Yes this is slow burn I'm sorry


	9. Family Talks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikasa learns about what happened to Eren a year prior.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: suicide mention

"I'm not letting her stay home," Levi said, arms crossed. The morning had come, and Mikasa hadn't woken up on time. Erwin had suggested she stay home, but Levi was adamant that she go to school anyway.

"She isn't some defenceless kid. And she can't miss any more days of school."

"When did you fall in love with the law?" Erwin teased. Levi wasn't having it.

"Look, the law can fuck itself. This isn't about that. It's about her not becoming a dropout and having her life ruined!"

"I can't go to school today. I'm sick."

Both men looked to the top of the stairs, where Mikasa stood. She had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and, lo and behold, she looked awful. Pale and sickly and sleep-deprived. Erwin looked at her with sympathy.

"Go back to bed. I'll call the office," he said. Mikasa nodded and turned around, going back into her room.

Levi stared at Erwin in disappointment. He shrugged.

"She's clearly sick," he said. "And we need to talk to her before she goes back to school. About..."

He took Levi's hands in his own, squeezing his one good hand. Levi didn't meet his eyes. He didn't want to consider the fact that their son might be dead in a ditch somewhere.

"I have a class in twenty minutes," he said, pulling his hands out of Erwin's. He turned around, avoiding his gaze. He knew that Erwin would be giving him _that_ look. That tender look, the one he used whenever he wanted him to do something. He rarely gave in, but today, he didn't bother arguing.

"Fine. She can stay home."

He felt Erwin softly kiss the back of his head, and walked away to get ready for his class.

When she heard Erwin's car drive out of the driveway, Mikasa sent Armin an "I'll be there soon" text, and arranged pillows under her bedcover to make it look like she was under it. When she was sure that her decoy was convincing enough should her parents come home early, she opened her window and climbed out. She used the lattice as a ladder. It wasn't like the wisteria they had planted had lived long enough to use the lattice.

Like the other day, she jogged all the way to the farmhouse. She didn't bother timing herself. There were more important things on her mind, like how her brother was going to be killed, and had a weapon in his blood. And how she needed to talk to the alien.

She went straight to the barn when she got to the Reiss house. Linda would ask why she wasn't at school, and she'd call her dads and then she'd be in trouble. Besides, the barn was far away enough from the house that nobody would notice that she was there.

She stopped outside the barn door, and listened. She could hear conversation, and recognised the alien's voice. Her chest tightened in rage, and she pushed open the door. Armin looked at her, and waved her over. The alien, whose helmet was off, frowned.

"We took her translator out of the helmet," Armin said, and now that Mikasa looked closer she could see the microphone-like appliance hooked around the alien's ear.

"That's wonderful," Mikasa said. She knelt down so that she was at eye level with the alien. "How do we rescue my brother?"

The alien stared at her like she was crazy, then cracked a disbelieving smile. "Are you serious? You want to go after one of the best ships in the imperial fleet, with primitive technology and no weapons?"

Mikasa kept her stoic gaze. "Well, we can start by going back the way you came."

The alien grimaced further. Armin pulled Mikasa aside.

"Okay, I think I'd better fill you in," he said quietly. "Last night, I got some stuff out of her. B-07 is stranded here and she was on her way to the crash site where this fugitive was last seen, apparently he has some stuff that can help her get home."

"B-07?" Mikasa questioned.

"That's her name. Well, serial number. I think she's a clone or something."

Mikasa looked back at the alien, who was still frowning at her. "And did she tell you anything about Historia and Ymir?" She asked. 

"She mentioned abducting some long-lost puppet ruler and a human she thought was me. So I think it's safe to say that that's them."

"Oh, Armin-"

"Hey. At least we know where they are now." Armin waved her concerns away. "I'm fine."

Mikasa frowned, but decided to move on. She walked back to the alien.

"Listen up, Seven," she said. "When we let you out, and take you to the fugitive's house, and you get a way back home, you're going to bring our siblings back."

"You're still serious about that?" B-07 asked. "I can't save your brother. And even if I could, I wouldn't. We need the weapon."

Mikasa stared at her, then with a crack, smacked her hand across her face.

"Mikasa, what are you doing?" Armin exclaimed. She didn't bother turning around to talk to him. B-07 was staring at the ground in shock, more out of surprise than pain.

"My brother's going to die if you don't help us, and you're sitting there laughing, you heartless bitch!" Mikasa cried. Tears welled in her eyes. She swallowed back a sob. "Eren is the only person I can trust in the world, and you don't care."

"Of course I don't care. I don't even know you," the alien said. Mikasa clenched her fists, and took a step back.

"Fine then. Tell me how I can get Eren back," she said. B-07 raised her eyebrows.

"Not only would that make me a traitor, you can't steal your brother back from the Marleyan empire. It's impossible, you're crazy."

Mikasa glared at her, then stormed out. B-07 dropped her tough facade.

"So, are you going to help?" Armin asked her.

She shook her head. "There isn't anything I can do."

"Nothing at all?"

They made eye contact, and he could see the fear in her eyes.

"You don't know what you're dealing with here."

\--

Mikasa went back to school the next day, but Armin didn't. He'd texted her when she was in class and told her that he was skipping again to look after B-07. She wished him good luck, and promised to bring his schoolwork back to him.

Mikasa went to soccer practice as usual.

"Are you alright?" The coach asked. "You seem off your game today."

"Oh, it's nothing," she replied. She trusted her coach, but she wasn't going to tell him about the alien she had locked up in her friend's barn.

"Alright, well, rest up. We need you at your prime on Saturday."

Mikasa nodded, and headed to her next class.

"Hey, wait up!"

She turned around and saw Jean. She waited for him to catch up.

"Hey, uh, I know this is gonna sound weird," he said, laughing with awkwardness. "But after the game on Saturday, a bunch of us are going into town, and we're gonna grab some drinks - we've got some fake IDs, and I thought it'd be good if you came as well."

He smiled, and waited expectantly for her answer.

Mikasa was being asked out. She didn't know what to say. He'd flirted with her before, but he'd never been so upfront with her.

"I'm busy," she said. "I need to... Study. At home."

It was a quick lie, but Jean believed it. "Oh. Okay. I'll catch you around," he said with a wink. Mikasa turned, and made her way to Maths.

Erwin's car was in the driveway when Mikasa came home from school, which was odd, since he usually worked late. Mikasa dumped her bag in the hall, and walked into the lounge room. There sat Erwin and Levi, sitting on the couch. They both looked grim.

"Mikasa, I'm glad you're home," Erwin said. He smiled, though it didn't reach his eyes. Levi didn't even look up at her. "I think you should sit. We need to talk."

Mikasa sat. "What's wrong?" She asked.

"It's about Eren," Erwin said. Mikasa's chest tightened. "When you were away on your exchange trip, there was an... incident. He ended up in hospital."

"He tried to kill himself," Levi said, still keeping his head down.

"What?"

Mikasa couldn't believe what she was hearing. Eren couldn't have - she would have known. He would have told her. They told each other everything.

 _Except for that_ , the tiny voice in the back of her head said. She ignored it.

"We think that he might have tried to..."

"He's not dead!" Mikasa exclaimed. That earned her strange yet sympathetic looks from her dads. "He isn't..."

"I know that this is hard for you," Erwin said. "It's hard for all of us. But we can't deny that there is a possibility that Eren might have attempted suicide again."

"No, I mean..." Mikasa trailed off. She wanted to tell her parents that Eren wasn't dead, at least not yet - but they didn't know about the aliens. She would sound like a madwoman, raving about nonsense to deal with her grief.

She looked at Levi, who was still staring at the ground. There was an empty look to his face. Emptier than usual. Mikasa wanted to say something, but she stayed quiet.

"You can tell us anything, you know?" Erwin said, putting his hand on Mikasa's knee. "We're always here for you to talk to if you need."

Mikasa nodded, and looked at the floor.

"I need to go upstairs," she said.

"That's okay. I need to cook tea anyway," Erwin said. He stood up, and went out to the kitchen. Mikasa stood up to leave, but-

"Don't do anything," Levi said. His voice was directed towards the ground, but Mikasa still heard it.

"Pardon?"

"Look. Things are going to be different. I get that. But don't you dare hurt yourself."

He looked up, for the first time in the conversation. His eyes were serious.

"I won't," she said. She didn't know much about Levi's past - only bits and pieces she had pieced together. But she knew there had been loss. And the look in his eyes confirmed it. It was the look of a man who had had enough of losing people.

Mikasa immediately called Armin when she got upstairs.

"They think he attempted suicide," she explained.

"Did you tell them the truth?"

"No? Of course not!" She said. "Levi would think I was on drugs or something."

"Just Levi?"

"Yeah, Erwin's surprisingly open minded about conspiracies and that. Just not the antisemitic ones. Anyway, no, I didn't tell them that Eren's actually been abducted by aliens." She sat down on her bed, and held a pillow to her chest. "Did you know that Eren attempted suicide last year?"

Armin was silent.

"Did you know?" Mikasa asked again, accusingly.

"I knew," he said quietly.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because he wanted it to be a secret. And also... because Levi threatened to break my kneecaps if I told anyone."

Mikasa stayed silent, trying to think of a worthy comeback. However, Armin's reasoning was justified.

"I just feel so... So lied to," she said. "Like, we're so close, but all this time I never knew that he was..."

As she spoke, the thought of her own secret came to mind and she felt guilty. But that didn't count, because she was going to tell Eren eventually. When the time was right. She'd been telling herself that for a year, however. _I'll tell him tomorrow. Next week. After Hanukkah. I'll wait for him to ask about it, and I'll tell him._ But she never did.

And now she might not ever be able to tell him the truth. There wasn't anyone she could trust with that information on this planet.

"Hey, uh, Mikasa," Armin said, and she was snapped out of her thoughts. "B-07 and I - we came to an agreement."

"You did?" Mikasa asked. "Has she promised to help us?"

"Uh, kind of," Armin said. "Hanji and I are going to drive her to the place where the fugitive crashed, and she's going to try and build something to get her off-world."

"Oh, okay," Mikasa said. "Do you need me to come along? As backup?"

"Sure, you can come along if you want," he said. "We'll pick you up."

"We're doing it now?"

"Well, yeah," Armin said. Mikasa looked around, hung up, then quickly got ready to go out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Referring to characters as just a code and not their name sucks but it's gonna be good okay bear with me


	10. The Doctor's House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> B-07 shows the gang the site where the fugitive was last seen. She also reveals some... interesting information.

"I'm going out!" Mikasa called, hoping that her dads would hear and let her go with little question.

"What time are you coming back?" Erwin called back.

"Uh, I don't know. I'll bring my phone."

"Just remember, you have school tomorrow!"

"Shut the fuck up! I'm trying to study!" (that was Levi.)

"Okay, bye!"

Mikasa stepped outside, instantly feeling the autumn chill. She was glad for the scarf she always wore. It had been a gift from Eren one year, because when he learned that she didn't celebrate Christmas, he had to get her a gift. At least, that was the story Carla had told them. They were three and couldn't remember it.

Mikasa didn't remember much from before Erwin and Levi had adopted her. She'd been four when her parents had died. She remembered snippets, bits and pieces: the horses that had lived on the neighbouring farm, her mother's embroideries, drinking grape juice at Passover and pretending it was wine.

Hanji's beat-up old ute was parked on the side of the street. She wrapped her scarf tighter around herself and walked down the porch steps. She opened the back door and got in.

The alien sat on the back seat as well, scowling at her. Her armour was gone; instead she was wearing boxer shorts, a worn and oversized hoodie, and a baseball cap. An appliance that looked like a cross between a radio and a GPS sat in her lap.

"So where's this fugitive's place?" Mikasa asked, clipping in her seatbelt and ignoring B-07.

"Nearby," B-07 said. She tapped the side of the GPS-radio thing. "I have the coordinates in this thing."

"So, Armin told me on the way over that you and the old men had a talk," Hanji said as she drove down the street. At the end, she asked, "which way?"

B-07 squinted at the device. "That way," she said, pointing left. "It's outside of town."

"Alright then," Hanji said as she turned left. "So, are you alright? Is there anything you need to talk about?"

"No," Mikasa said. She didn't trust Hanji or Armin not to rat her out to her dads.

"Take a left turn at the end of the street," B-07 said. She didn't appear to be listening to the conversation.

"Look, you can always talk to us," Hanji said. "I mean, you aren't really hiding anything from us."

 _Oh, but_ _I am_. Mikasa couldn't tell anyone about... That. They wouldn't see her in the same way. And now that she didn't have Eren to go to, she needed to cling to the few friends she had and she wasn't going to do anything that could sabotage her relationships with them.

"Turn right now," B-07 said. She continued to give directions. Mikasa turned her gaze to her.

"Why is _she_ wearing a hoodie?" Mikasa asked. B-07 glared at her.

"It's a disguise," Armin said. "It's more inconspicuous than armour."

""Inconspicuous". In case you haven't noticed, she's _blue_."

"Nobody will notice," Armin said, shrugging. 

_Yeah, right,_ Mikasa thought, but didn't say it.

They drove out of town, the neat gardens turning to paddocks. The area was somewhat familiar. Mikasa tried to think of how she knew it.

"We're nearly there," B-07 said. "Just... Down that path."

Hanji turned off down a driveway. It still felt familiar. Then it hit her.

"It's Eren's house," Armin said, beating Mikasa to it. "I mean, it makes sense, right? The weapon had to get into his bloodstream somehow."

"How does a weapon even get into someone's bloodstream in the first place?" Mikasa asked.

"That's classified information," B-07 replied.

In a few minutes, Eren's old house came into view - or what was left of it, that is. It had been destroyed in a housefire years ago, a fire that had taken the life of his mother. All that remained were a few charred ceiling beams, disintegrating as the years went on. Grass had sprung up between the beams, and a few birds flitted between them. 

B-07 was the first one to get out of the car. The others quickly followed her, and watched as she looked amongst the ruins of the house.

"So what are you even looking for, anyway?" Mikasa asked.

The alien didn't answer her. She just kept digging through the ruins.

"Oh, I've got it!"

They spun around to look at Armin. He looked like a lightbulb had gone off in his head.

"There was a UFO sighting the night the house burned down, right? So what if the fugitive you're looking for was responsible for the fire?"

He got several questioning looks.

"That sounds dumb," Mikasa said.

"Think about it - it can't be a coincidence."

Mikasa turned away from him, and bobbed down next to B-07.

"How can I help?" She asked.

"You know this place, right?" B-07 asked. Mikasa nodded. "Was there a basement or something?"

Of course there was a basement. It was _the_ basement. They weren't allowed into it because of the dangerous chemicals Eren's dad worked with.

"Yeah. Why?"

B-07 stood up. "Show me where it is."

Mikasa narrowed her eyes. "Why?"

"Show me the basement."

Mikasa stood up, and walked over to where she remembered the hallway being.

A wave of nostalgia hit her like a truck. She remembered standing in this hallway. She remembered playing in this house.

_Eren's 7th birthday party._

Mikasa had been one of only a few people who'd shown up. Well, to be fair, she'd been one of only a few people invited. Armin hadn't been invited, but that was because he didn't live there yet. Mikasa didn't remember who else had come, but she remembered sitting in the hall opposite the basement door at the end of the party, waiting to be picked up.

"Do you think anyone at school is cute?" Mikasa had asked. 

"No," Eren said, sounding offended. "What, do _you_ think anyone's cute?"

Mikasa hugged her knees. Historia had called her pretty on the playground the other day, and she'd had been thinking about it ever since.

"Yeah."

"Who is it?" Eren asked.

"Don't tell anyone," she warned. Eren nodded. "Pinky promise?"

Mikasa held out a finger, and Eren wrapped his around it.

"Pinky promise," he said. "Who is it?"

Mikasa looked up and down the hallway to make sure Eren's parents couldn't hear her.

"Historia."

"You think that _Historia's_ cute?" Eren asked, judgingly. Mikasa nodded. "But she's a girl."

"That doesn't mean she isn't pretty," Mikasa said, in defence of her crush.

"But you're a girl too. That's gay."

Eren said this last bit a tad too loud, and his mother came in to scold him for using "gay" as an insult, even though he wasn't using it as an insult (at least, not intentionally).

In the present day, Armin put a hand on Mikasa's elbow.

"Are you okay?" He asked gently. Mikasa snapped back to the present.

"Yeah. Sorry. Just..."

"Memories?"

Mikasa looked down.

Armin looked around at the ruins. "Eren took me here when you were away on your exchange," he explained. "He... he didn't take it so well either. He broke down, started telling me about what happened - about how he saw his mother get killed."

"You two sure did a lot when I was away," Mikasa muttered. She didn't see the blush dust Armin's cheeks.

Mikasa walked over to where the basement door was, and moved aside a beam that crumbled in her hands.

"The basement is here," she called. B-07 was by her side in a flash, and ripped open the door with her bare fingers. She walked down the stairs.

Mikasa stood at the top of the stairs, hesitating. She'd always been told to stay out of the basement, and even though both of Eren's parents were dead, she still took their rules to heart. But she came down anyway. Because there were more important things at hand, like the survival of her brother. Mikasa was sure Carla could forgive her for going downstairs. 

The interior of the basement was laid out like an office. A totally normal office. There were bookshelves lining the walls, and several clean workbenches. B-07 went straight away to the workbenches, and started digging through the draws.

"It doesn't look like there's any dangerous chemicals in here," Armin mumbled. Mikasa didn't pay it much mind, as she was more occupied with _why_ the alien had asked to be down here. Wouldn't the fugitive's wreck be out where the ship had crashed? Or - had Eren's dad scavenged the wreck and taken the pieces into the basement, the same way Armin had? That made sense, actually.

Hanji walked past her down the stairs. "What are we looking for?" She asked, eager to join the search. 

"Anything that looks like the drone or the gun," B-07 answered, not looking up from the drawer she was looking through.

They searched the basement for ages, opening every draw and checking every bookshelf, but they found nothing. At least, nothing that the alien wanted. Armin found an old wedding photo. He kept it, deciding that he'd give it to Eren when they found him.

"It's getting late," Mikasa said, checking her watch. "We need to go home."

B-07 kicked the door of the cupboard she had been looking in closed in frustration. "Fine. There's nothing here."

"Well, I guess we're going home," Hanji said. "I'll go turn the car on."

She walked up the stairs, Armin quick to follow. Only Mikasa and B-07 were left downstairs.

"How are we going to get into space now?" Mikasa asked. There was a lump in her throat that wasn't going away, because there was the chance that _they weren't going to get to Eren in time and he'd be sacrificed in space-_

B-07 gave her a cold stare, but there was something behind it. A vulnerability of some kind.

"His ship should still be in the area somewhere," she said. "We'll just come back tomorrow."

"Maybe." Mikasa tried to look at the alien with as much softness as she could. B-07 looked at her in semi-disgust, and Mikasa felt her blood run cold. She immediately averted her gaze.

"I need to go," she said, and turned away.

"Wait-" the alien grabbed her wrist, and she turned back over her shoulder. B-07's gaze had softened again, with more of that unidentifiable emotion. "I think you should know this."

And B-07 whispered something in Mikasa's ear that made her feel sicker than she already was.

\--

Mikasa didn't get back home until around eight. She tried to enter quietly, so her dads didn't see her come in.

"You're home late."

She jumped. Levi stood by the foot of the stairs, arms crossed and pissed-off expression on his face.

"I was busy," she said.

"And you didn't think to call?" He asked.

"No. Like I said, I was busy. Is tea ready?"

Levi glared at her, with the most poisonous gaze she had seen in a long time. "You'd better drop that attitude, young lady," he said in a dangerously calm voice.

Mikasa didn't back down. The confrontation didn't get to escalate, however, because Erwin walked into the entryway at that moment.

"Mikasa, you're back," he said, stepping in between his husband and daughter. Neither stopped their stare-off. "We were starting to get worried about you."

Mikasa pulled her jacket off. "I was fine," she said. She finally tore her gaze from the stare-off, and hung her jacket on the coat rack.

"We didn't know that," Erwin explained gently. "Mikasa, you need to keep in contact with us so we know that you're safe."

"I know," she said, not being able to look him in the eyes. That was Erwin's superpower; he could make anyone uncomfortable enough if he tried. "I won't do it again."

He gave her a soft smile that she tried to ignore. "I'm going to bed," she said. She headed upstairs and into her bedroom, where she sat down and put her head in between her knees.

What did it all mean? What was going on? Mikasa didn't know for sure, but there was something big going on.

From downstairs, she could hear her dads talking about something. She overheard the word "therapy".

Shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> try and guess what the "secret thing" annie whispered was... I know you probably already know because let's be real, it's kind of obvious, but I want to know what you guys think


	11. Family Therapy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikasa goes to a therapy session, represses her sexuality, and reflects on the information she found out about Eren.

Dr Janicek's office was located in the next city over, in a high-rise building that overlooked a busy street. The office was decorated as boringly as any office could ever be; the desk had a photograph of the doctor's teenage son, and on the walls were some of those boring motivational posters along with a clock that marked the slow passage of time. The walls were grey, and the desk was grey, and even the seat Mikasa was laying on was grey.

Dr Janicek was an old family friend, a woman well into her fifties. Mikasa didn't know until the trip into town, but she'd been the therapist Eren had been going to for the past year.

"I want you to understand that you can tell me anything at all," Dr Janicek said. "Nothing will go back to your parents. Even if you don't think it matters but you need to say it anyway, say it."

 _You can tell her anything except about the aliens,_ Mikasa reminded herself.

"I'm not suicidal," was the first thing she said.

"Alright," Dr Janicek said. "Rather than focus on what you aren't, why don't you tell me what you are. How has school been?"

Mikasa's first instinct was to say, "fine," because that's what she always said when she was asked that question.

"Distracted," she whispered.

"Pardon?"

"I can't focus on my work because I'm too busy thinking about the fact that my brother could be dead." _Or, as B-07 had suggested yesterday, worse._

She delivered the sentence with more venom than she intended. Dr Janicek furrowed her brows. 

"How did you deal with your trauma after losing your biological parents?" She asked.

Mikasa stared at her.

"I don't know. I was four," Mikasa said. The truth was, she really didn't remember much about the period when she had just been adopted, or when her parents had died. In her memory, there was a quick jump between _being a baby_ and _living with the Smiths._

"I just... Got over it."

"Well. Have you spoken with your teachers about the situation? That you might need some extra time to grieve, and then to focus on your work?"

Mikasa had thought about it - but she couldn't take any more time off. She was days behind in all her classes, and she needed to catch up. If she took _more_ time off, then she would fall behind even more, and her grades would slip-

"I haven't done that, no," she said. "I guess... That'd help."

"That's good. You can always go back and redo your education. You have to deal with your own problems before your math problems." Dr Janicek smiled at that comment, but if she had expected a laugh from Mikasa, she was disappointed. "Oh, look at that, our time is nearly up. Is there anything else you need to talk to me about?"

_Yes. It's okay. I can tell her._

But as Mikasa opened her mouth, she felt the words stick to the back of her throat. She tried to shape her mouth around the first letter, but anything after that would not come out.

_I'm a l-_

But she couldn't say it. Her brain wouldn't let her. If she said it, then there would be no denying it.

"No," Mikasa said. "There's nothing."

Dr Janicek gave her a sympathetic smile, and capped her pen. "I hope that this was helpful to you."

"Yeah," she lied, sliding off the couch. "Bye."

She left the room. Erwin was waiting for her outside, looking at something on his phone.

"Oh. You're done?" He asked. He put his phone in his pocket and stood up. He put his hand on Mikasa's shoulder and smiled, his eyes filled with sadness. "How did you go?"

"Okay," Mikasa said, staring at the ground. Erwin made a sound of contentment, then took his hand off her shoulder.

"Come on, let's go home. We're having lasagna for dinner."

Mikasa looked up at him, surprised. "Really? Not casserole?"

"We... We threw the casseroles out. I know, I know, food waste and all that, but they were going off and, let's face it, we weren't going to eat them."

True. If Mikasa never saw another casserole again, it would be too soon.

They took the stairs down to the ground level. Mikasa noticed, from the floor-to-ceiling windows in the foyer, that it was raining outside. It would have only just started.

"I just need to talk to the receptionist," Erwin said, and Mikasa was left to herself. She busied herself by looking at the pamphlets on the table in the waiting room - and one, that made her heartbeat increase, caught her eye. She looked over to the desk, where Erwin was still busy, and picked it up. _4 tips on coming out to your family._ She didn't need it. Not really. Because she would find a boy one day and all of this would be over and she wouldn't ever have to think about it.

"Mika, honey, we're going!"

She shoved the pamphlet in her pocket and turned around.

"I'm coming."

\--

Dinner was a silent affair. Aside from a few flavourless questions like "how was your day?" the Ackerman-Smith family just sat at the table and picked at their food. Mikasa kept thinking about everything that had happened; the therapy session, the pamphlet in her jacket pocket, her exchange year in Japan, oh, and the fact that her brother might be-

She pushed her food around on her plate. She decided to break the silence.

"Did either of you know Eren's dad?" She asked.

"No," Levi answered immediately.

"A little bit," Erwin said, slower and calmer. "We spoke, once or twice. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, it's nothing," Mikasa said. After what B-07 had said, she had been thinking about him all day. She really didn't know anything about him, except from his name and that he was a doctor.

She pushed the lasagna around on her plate. There was one thing that she wasn't considering. She didn't want to consider it. Eren's father and the fugitive the aliens were looking for couldn't be the same person. They just couldn't. Because that would mean that Eren was half alien, and he couldn't be. Her brother, her best friend. They'd lived together for eight years, and known each other even longer. He was human. He looked human. His father looked human.

But there were the weird things, too. The things Mikasa had tried to explain away as a trick of the light, or a side affect of too little sleep. Like how Eren could heal slightly faster than her, or the way his eyes would flicker when he got _really_ angry.

And it made sense, too. She didn't like that.

\--

They washed up in silence as well. Nobody wanted to say anything.

As Mikasa put a dinner plate away, the doorbell buzzed.

"Who the fuck is ringing the doorbell at seven?" Levi muttered. He didn't like visitors.

"I'll get it," Mikasa said. She put the towel down on the bench and ran to the front door. As she did, she wondered who it was. A horrible thought caught in the back of her mind: it was Nile, and he'd found Eren's body. But that thought was actually stupid, because she knew that Eren was in space. She wasn't sure why she was worried.

She opened the door. On the other side stood a guy in a white uniform that had _Hermes Shipping_ _Service_ over the heart. In the driveway was a van with the same name painted on the side.

"Delivery for a Mr Eren Jaeger?" The delivery man asked. He looked at a clipboard in his hands, then back at Mikasa. "Does he live here?"

She nodded. "Yeah. He's... not here right now. Do you want me to sign for him?"

"Oh, technically you can't..." the man said. "But this's been in transit for way too long. I'm sick of it. Just take the package." He handed over a small package. Mikasa took it, frowning at the cardboard box. She wondered what the hell it contained.

"Thank you," she said, but the delivery man had already gotten back into the van. Mikasa closed the door, and walked back to the kitchen.

"Who was it?" Erwin asked. He'd taken over the drying up.

"It was a... delivery. For Eren." Mikasa looked at the tiny box in her hands. "I'm going to hold on to it for him."

Levi looked like he was about to say something, but stayed quiet.

"Do you want me to finish the drying?" Mikasa asked.

Erwin smiled sadly at her. "Don't worry about it. It's alright."

"Oh. Okay," she mumbled, and went upstairs to her bedroom. She sat down on her bed, and took the package in her hands. She looked at it, turning it over.

 _What the hell did you buy?_ She thought. Well, if Eren wasn't on the planet, surely he wouldn't mind Mikasa looking at his online purchases, right?

Grabbing a pen from her desk, Mikasa opened the box. Inside, wrapped in several layers of bubblewrap, was a black ring. She took it out, and held it up. It felt like silicone.

It was a ring. It was just a ring. Just a silicone ring, couldn't have cost more than two dollars.

But it was Eren's. He had bought it, so it clearly meant something to him. Mikasa put it in her pocket. She was going to hang on to it. When she saw him next, she was going to give it to him, because they were going to see each other again. She was sure of it.

"I promise," she whispered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short chapter I know, but I wanted to get it out quickly because I'm not sure when we're going to have internet again... I still have data so I'll be fine, but I'm not used to using Ao3 on my phone so. Anyway... did any of you guys guess the plot twist?


	12. "The Captain America"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang goes to Radioshack to build a radio. Mikasa thinks over her situation.

It was Saturday, which meant two days off school. That meant:

\- more time to work out, and;

\- more time to spend at the barn.

Laying on her bed, recovering her muscles, Mikasa checked her phone.

_Me: updates on 7 - 9:23_

_Son: Oh yeah, can you come over later today? - 9:23_

_Me: Ill be over in abt half an hour - 9:24_

Sitting on a couch in the barn, Armin put his phone down.

"Is she coming?" B-07 asked, from where she was sitting on the floor. She had a small radio in her hands, and was tweaking it.

"Yeah, in about thirty minutes," Armin said. He got up off the couch, and opened the DVD case. "So, after this one it's _Guardians of the Galaxy_ , you're gonna love it. It's right up your alley."

\--

True to her word, Mikasa showed up at the barn in half an hour. She pushed open the door and noted that an old television had been set up, and in front of it sat Armin and B-07.

"Why the hell are you watching _Avengers?_ We're supposed to be searching for ways to bring Eren back from space!"

"It's not _Avengers_ , Mikasa, it's- whatever, you don't care."

"And we're working on bringing your brother back from space," B-07 said. "It's just hard when I have limited technology and _one_ radio."

"Look, I promise I'll take you to Radioshack later. But that, plus your gun and the drone, is seriously all I have for you to take apart."

Mikasa stared at them, bickering like old friends. She lifted an eyebrow, waiting to be filled in on whatever happened between the two of them in the day she hadn't seen them.

"New plan," Armin said, almost reading her mind. "We aren't building a ship or anything to get into space, we're going to hijack the signal of a passing ship and hope they're friendly."

"Oh." Mikasa stood there. "So we're really going to space?"

The thought terrified her. Being up there, so very far away from her family and her school and everything she'd ever known. Except for Eren. He was in space.

"And did she fill you in on... what she told me?" Mikasa continued.

Armin looked at her with an expression that confirmed it. "Yeah. At the moment it's just a theory, but Hanji's doing some research at the library. To find out if Doctor Jaeger really was an... an alien."

Neither mentioned the elephant in the room, about what that meant about Eren.

"And, you're watching _Avengers_ ," Mikasa added, to change the subject.

"It's not-"

"Armin decided to introduce me to your human culture. He says that the Captain America is your father, but I think he was lying."

Mikasa internally rolled her eyes. He wasn't the first person to liken Erwin to Captain America; and though it was annoying, she couldn't deny the comparison. Both were handsome blond men, both have punched nazis and wouldn't hesitate to do it again (but as far as Mikasa knew, Captain America wasn't bisexual).

"He _was_. He was making a joke." Mikasa crossed her arms. "What are we doing today?"

"Going to Radioshack," Armin said. "When Hanji comes over, because she's our ride."

"And until then?"

Armin shrugged. "We're having an MCU marathon, so you can join in if you want."

Mikasa frowned at him, but sat down.

\--

They were midway through the second _Guardians_ film when Hanji showed up. Armin paused the movie, and they were all snapped out of their brief distraction.

"You guys are watching _Avengers?_ " Hanji asked.

"No, it's not _Aven_ -"

"Are you going to take us to Radioshack?" The alien interrupted.

"Oh, yeah, sure," Hanji said. "You're all ready to go?"

They all got up, and gathered their things. Armin had left his wallet in the house so he ran up to get it; leaving the others to walk down to the car and start it up.

Mikasa got into the front seat this time.

"So, uh, Hanji," she said, quiet enough so that the alien wouldn't hear. "Did you find anything out about... Doctor Jaeger?"

Hanji was silent, her expression grim. "Grisha Jaeger first showed up in 2000. The same time and area that a "meteorological event" happened."

Mikasa felt a a hollow pit in her stomach. "So Eren really is part alien," she mumbled.

(Hanji didn't know how to respond to that. Her best friends' kid was a goddamned _alien.)_

"Hey, I'm here," Armin said, opening the back door and sliding in. "Did I miss anything?"

"Not much. We're going now," Hanji said. She wasn't entirely sure how to tell Armin about Eren. He'd find out, eventually. Even though Hanji had only known the kid for about a week, she knew how smart he was. You couldn't hide much from him.

The nearest Radioshack was just out of town. It didn't have many customers, at least not at this time of day. Hanji parked the car. She turned around to make sure that the alien was well disguised and was pleased; she had the cap on and her hood over her head.

"Look, so long as we don't steal anything that disguise _should_ be adequate," Armin said. The alien nodded, and got out of the car. The rest followed.

"Do you have a list of what you need?" Mikasa asked.

"I made two copies."

Armin pulled a folded-up piece of paper from his pocket. He passed it over to Mikasa. It consisted of two radios, alongside some other things Mikasa didn't know.

"This is going to be expensive," Mikasa said.

"It's fine, I have money." Armin handed Hanji the list. "You two find this stuff, we'll get the radios."

Armin and the alien went off in search of the radios.

"Do you know what we're looking for?" Mikasa asked Hanji, because she sure didn't.

"Oh, yeah! I know all about radio stuff. I know what we're looking for."

\--

"I have no idea what we're looking for."

Mikasa and Hanji stood in front of a shelf full of cables, totally at a loss. They were seriously thinking about giving up and going back to Armin for help, when a friendly voice came from behind them.

"Hi, is there anything I can help you with today?"

They turned around to see a pasty young woman in the Radioshack uniform.

"Oh thank god," Hanji said. "Yeah, we don't know anything."

"Well, do you have a list?" The employee - Kersten, her nametag read - asked. Mikasa handed her the list.

"LEDs, speakers, switches- are you two building something?"

"Yeah, we are," Mikasa said.

"A'right then, follow me."

Kersten lead them down the aisle, and after some messing around they got everything on their list.

"That should be everything," Kersten said. "I hope you two enjoy your mother-daughter building project."

"What? No, she's like my niece," Hanji laughed. Mikasa crossed her arms.

"Yeah, she's not my mother."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Kersten said. "I really am. Are you ready to pay now?"

"Not yet, we're waiting for someone else - here they are!"

Armin and the alien came around the corner, radio boxes in their arms.

"Hey, did you get what you need?" Armin asked. Mikasa held up the box for the speakers in answer. The four of them moved to the checkout while Kersten went to the aid of another customer.

The man at the checkout gave the group (especially B-07) some weird looks.

"We're doing a school project," Armin said immediately.

"I'm driving them around," Hanji said. "They're an absolute burden on society, not knowing how to drive. Damn kids."

"O-kay," the checkout guy said, bagging their items. Mikasa blinked in disbelief at the total price, but Armin pulled out a credit card and payed with little concern. Mikasa sometimes forgot that his adoptive-but-technically-biological family were practically the founders of the town.

As they headed out, the cashier called out. "Hey, ma'am, are you okay?"

The alien turned around to him and said, with a monotone voice, "I have a cold."

That seemed to do the trick, as the cashier went back to his job. It was interesting how easily somebody could excuse blue skin as a trick of the light (or a cold).

"That was close," Armin said when they were all in the car. "Thank god we got out of there in time."

"He totally fell for it," the alien said. She undid one of the boxes and started taking out the radio.

Mikasa stared at her over the seat. The alien stared back, ice cold.

"So now you'll be able to work on the radio-whatever?" Hanji asked, not noticing Mikasa's stare-off with the alien.

"I hope so!" Armin said. He looked over at the alien for confirmation.

"It should be adequate," B-07 said, not breaking eye contact with Mikasa.

When they got back to the barn, the alien set to work in laying all of the pieces out in front of her, organising them by shape and colour and function.

"Do you even need me for this?" Mikasa asked.

"No. We're fine without you," the alien said. Mikasa crossed her arms.

"Hey, come on. I'll take you home," Hanji offered. She put a hand on Mikasa's shoulder that calmed her down almost instantly.

"Okay."

\--

Both Levi and Erwin were out when Mikasa got home. The house was empty, every footstep echoing throughout it. Mikasa felt almost as empty as the house.

Eren was an alien. At least, half an alien, on his dad's side. All the evidence pointed to Grisha Jaeger being an extraterrestrial. Eren had a superweapon in his blood - a superweapon that could only be removed by killing him. They were going to space to get him back.

They were going into space to rescue Mikasa's alien brother from being killed for a superweapon in his blood. 

A door opened, and Mikasa jumped.

"Shit," Levi said. "When did you get home?"

"Like, a minute ago. You were here the whole time?"

Levi nodded tiredly. "Studying." 

"Okay," Mikasa said. She stood awkwardly.

"Is something wrong?"

_Only that I'm leaving to go and bring your son back from space._

Mikasa was going to have to tell Levi and Erwin the truth at some point. Erwin might understand. He'd sit down and listen, at least, and he might believe her. But Levi - he wouldn't believe her. She didn't want to have to tell him. He wouldn't take it well.

"No, I'm fine," Mikasa said. 

"Good." Levi turned around and went back into the study.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," Mikasa whispered. She felt a warm tear spill down her face. She'd made a promise to Eren and she had to follow through on it. She just wasn't sure how she was going to break it to their parents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof sorry I took so long to upload - I've had some writer's block lately and I started school back again so bleh. I might write a lot more if I end up getting quarantined so who knows. Also I've started a collab with my friend AnimeAddict2018! It should be up in a month or two


	13. New Frontiers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erwin and Levi confront their daughter.

The following week was less eventful. Armin took almost all of his time off school, helping B-07 build the radio-whatever. Mikasa checked in on them from time to time, but could do nothing to help. B-07 didn't seem to like her involvement.

At home was just as depressing as it had been the past week. Erwin worked longer and longer hours, and Levi shut himself in the study whenever he was home.

School as well was more of the same thing. Mikasa went to soccer training and dealt with her schoolmates' sympathies. Jean especially tried to get close to her, but she gave him the cold shoulder as always. The game against Stohess Catholic was coming up, but it felt distant for some reason. Mikasa was usually excited for soccer matches, but she didn't feel _anything_ for the upcoming game.

It was Friday, now. Mikasa walked home in silence again. One of her neighbours, Mr Neisler, was up on a ladder and dressing his house in fake cobwebs. He waved at her as she walked past.

She didn't wave back. She gave him a quick nod of acknowledgement, and kept walking. That was how she usually greeted her neighbours. They didn't mind, they'd known her long enough to understand.

The house was, surprisingly, not as empty when she got home as it had been in the past weeks. Erwin sat at the table, with no coffee or newspaper or anything. He was staring off at a point in the distance, expressionless, and Mikasa panicked - because that was the same exact expression that Levi had worn the day Erwin had been in the accident.

Levi had picked them up from school that day. He never picked them up from school. Even before he'd started taking his uni course, he "didn't have the time" to drive Eren and Mikasa to and from school every day.

That was the first clue that something was up.

The second clue was that Levi was gripping the steering wheel so tight that he could have broken it.

"Is something wrong?" Eren had asked.

Levi had stared straight out the windscreen, and mumbled something.

"What?"

"Erwin's in the hospital."

Mikasa's blood ran cold. She'd misheard, clearly.

"He's, he's what?" Eren asked, letting out a nervous laugh. "You're joking, right? This isn't funny."

"There was an accident. He's in the emergency ward. I haven't visited him yet."

"Is he okay?" Eren asked. Levi didn't answer him. "Is he okay?! Mikasa, ask him, make him tell us-"

Eren shook Mikasa's shoulder, but she didn't say anything. It was happening again. She'd thought her new family was safe. They were supposed to be safe, this wasn't supposed to happen.

Mikasa wrapped her scarf tighter around her, the way she always did when she felt anxious or upset, and blocked out the sounds of her brother.

"Mikasa, Mikasa!" Eren shook her harder. She closed her eyes tight. "Mikasa, listen to me!"

Two hands gripped around her shoulders, and she screamed.

It was just Eren. Just her brother. He hugged her tightly. She hugged back.

In the present, Mikasa stood awkwardly.

"Is everything okay?" She asked.

Erwin looked up. He blinked his vacant expression away, noticing his daughter's presence.

"Yes," he said. "Nothing's wrong, don't worry."

Mikasa let out a breath, relaxing. She went into the kitchen to get a drink of water.

"They found someone who looks like Ymir a few states over," Erwin said. That caught her attention. "On camera. They think she might have killed Historia, so the search has doubled."

"Oh," Mikasa said, because truth be told in all this mess she'd forgotten about Ymir and Historia. They were just a by-product of what had happened to Eren, a footnote in the story. She supposed they were in space as well. Hadn't the alien said something about abducting them?

"I don't think Ymir killed her," Mikasa said. "She wouldn't do that."

"I think that was what they said about Ted Bundy too, wasn't it?"

Mikasa crossed her arms. She prepared to say something, but she wasn't sure what. She didn't have to think about it though, as her phone rang.

"Can I take this?" She asked. Erwin nodded, and she left the kitchen to go to her room.

"What is it?" She asked. "Is something wrong?"

"No!" Armin answered. His voice had an energetic bounce to it. "We've built the radio."

Mikasa stopped in her spot. They were one step closer to finding Eren.

"You have?"

"Yeah. We're going to try it out tonight. Do you want to come over?"

Mikasa glanced at her clock. "I'll be around at seven," she said.

"Cool! I'll see you then," he said, hanging up.

Mikasa felt giddy. They were going to find Eren, they were going to save him, they were going to bring him home. It was surreal.

She went back downstairs, and decided to start working on dinner. If she got that out of the way first, then she'd be able to go over to the barn sooner. That was all she could think of.

The barn. The radio. The alien. Space. Her brother. Alien empire. Fight? Fight. She could take an alien. She was strong. Space. How would they get back? Hijack a ship probably. Hijack a fast ship. She wanted to be back quickly. How far away had the aliens who'd abducted him gotten? Surely they'd still be in the solar system, right? Maybe. Probably. Fast ship. They needed a fast ship if they wanted to catch up to them. They were going to beat up some alien ass. Soon her brother would be back home, and they'd all be back to being normal.

"Are you alright?"

Mikasa snapped out of her thoughts and spun around. Erwin stood behind her, concern creasing his brow.

"I'm fine," she said in a way that sounded suspicious.

"You've been cutting air for the last three minutes," Erwin said. Mikasa looked at the knife in her hand, and then back at the one slice of carrot that had been cut already.

"Three minutes?" She whispered. Erwin nodded.

"I'm worried about you," he continued, in his soft voice. "You're acting strange, you're spacing out-"

"Spacing out," she echoed again. _If only you knew._

He smiled sadly at her, putting a finger under her chin and lifting her face up to look at him.

"Eren isn't dead," Mikasa blurted.

Erwin's face saddened. "I know this is hard for you, but we have to understand that the worst might have happened. Eren was taken off his antidepressants before he ran away. When you were away, Eren tried to... Take his own life. It's possible that-"

"No, he isn't dead," Mikasa insisted. "I know he's alive."

""You know?"" Erwin changed his tone, immediately becoming more concerned. "Mikasa, has he been in contact with you?"

"What, no, but he's not dead-"

He took her hand in his. "Have you spoken to him?"

Mikasa shook her head. "I just know, okay?" She met 

A disappointed sigh. "Well, if you did know anything about where he was, you'd tell us, right?"

_I wish I could._

Mikasa nodded, tears starting to form. Erwin noticed, and put his arm around her shoulders.

"There, there, we'll be alright," he said. Mikasa rested her head on his shoulder, and let her tears out.

The door slammed open. Mikasa didn't need to look up to see that it was Levi, home from his classes. He stood in the kitchen with them, standing awkwardly to the side. Mikasa could feel her dads silently communicating, and Erwin let go of her. Levi stared directly at her.

"What happened."

It wasn't a question. It was more of an accusation.

"Can I talk to you in private?" Erwin said quietly. Levi looked to him, and then to Mikasa.

"Fine." He grabbed Erwin's hand, and took him into another room.

Mikasa just stood in place in the kitchen. Waiting until her dads had finished talking, talking about her. She was about to leave when Levi came back in.

"We're going out for tea tonight," he said bluntly.

Mikasa blinked. "But... but I've already started-"

"You cut the end off a carrot." Levi gestured to the carrot on the chopping board behind her. "We'll use it tomorrow. Come on. We're going to Crickets'."

\--

Crickets' Family Restaurant was a place Mikasa had been only once before, and her eyes started to well up with tears at the memories. It had been the very place where Erwin and Levi had broken the news that they were adopting her, and even more than ten years later, Mikasa remembered it clear as day.

The reason they had chosen to go to Crickets' was that, unlike McDonald's, Crickets' wasn't Sensory Hell. Levi couldn't eat at very many restaurants because of their lack of hygiene, but the owners of Crickets' had specially designed the place to be as accessible as possible.

They found a seat by a water feature in the corner, and talked about anything but Eren. At least, Erwin was talking. Mikasa was nodding along, and Levi wasn't acknowledging the conversation at all.

"Are you ready for me to take your order?" The waitress asked. Her voice sounded familiar, and Mikasa looked up-

"Sasha?"

Sasha looked at her in surprise. "Oh! Mikasa. Is this, um, your family?"

Mikasa bit her lip, and looked at her placemat. She knew what that tone of voice was. It was the surprise that new people she met had when they found out she had two dads. Mikasa was actually kind of surprised that Sasha and her had gone to school together for around four years, yet she didn't know about her parents.

"Yes, Mikasa's our daughter," Erwin said, his voice proud. "Are you and Mikasa friends at school?"

"Yeah, we are," Sasha said. "We're on the same soccer team. Mikasa's our best player. Are you coming to the game tomorrow morning, Mr Ackerman?"

Erwin didn't seem to mind being called by his husband's surname. "Actually, I'm working that day, but Levi is going."

Levi glared at Erwin, not having a choice in the matter. He didn't like being volunteered for things.

 _Oh yeah_ , Mikasa thought. The game. She'd forgotten about it again.

"I'll have the spinach and mushroom pasta," she said, trying to get Sasha to go away. This distraction worked, her dads remembering to order as well. Levi was, initially, just going to order a drink, but Erwin pushed until he ordered something.

Mikasa couldn't enjoy her meal. She was too worried. She kept checking her phone under the table every five minutes, and worried that her dads might bring up her episode earlier.

Finally, her phone buzzed. She immediately opened the messenger app.

_Son: hey where are you? - 7:01_

_Me: at dinner - 7:01_

_Me: dads won't let me leave - 7:01_

_Son: we're testing the radio soon - 7:02_

_Me: wait for me - 7:02_

_Son: we can't wait for long though 7:03_

_Me: please? - 7:03_

_Son: ok fine. Half an hour - 7:04_

"Who are you texting?" Erwin asked. Mikasa put her phone in her pocket quickly.

"Nobody."

"Wow, Odysseus is a player, who knew," Levi mumbled. Erwin ignored the comment.

"Is this another friend from school?" Erwin asked her.

"It's Armin," she admitted. "We're talking. Is it okay if I go around to his place, to finish this school project we're doing together?"

Erwin laced his fingers together. "Actually, Mikasa, we needed to talk to you."

So that was the reason, huh? They'd brought her to this restaurant as a diversion.

Mikasa grew nervous. "What... what about?"

Her dads exchanged a glance.

"About Eren," Levi said.

Mikasa shook her head, which made Levi sigh.

"I know you're tired of hearing it, but he isn't dead, I can prove it," she said lowly. Erwin looked at her with disappointment.

"What proof?" Levi asked. "You're sure you aren't in contact with him?"

Mikasa shook her head again. "If you take me to Armin's house, I can explain it to you, just-"

"Enough." Levi put his hand down on the table. Mikasa felt tears well up. 

_Nothing I say will convince them,_ she thought with sadness. Erwin started saying something, but she didn't hear him. Instead, she pushed her chair out. It fell to the ground with a clatter, alerting the other restaurant patrons. She faltered for a second, looking at the confused and annoyed faces of her fathers.

"I'm sorry," she said, before bolting out the door.

She could hear them chasing her outside, but she didn't dare look back. If they followed her, they'd see what they were doing in the barn. They'd meet the alien, Hanji could tell them what was going on. They could help in the investigation - plus it would give them some closure. 

The Reiss farm wasn't too distant from Crickets', a fact Mikasa was grateful for. She soon saw their house, and sped up. The others were out in the cornfield, setting up a radio thing. 

"Wait!" She cried. That caught their attention. 

"What's wrong?" Hanji asked. She was the first to notice Mikasa's tears, and rushed to her side. 

Mikasa shook her head. "I- I ran away," she said through her tears. "I thought if I could tell Erwin and Levi what happened, they'd understand, but they didn't believe me and I ran off-"

Hanji put a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, calm down. It's okay." She looked towards the barn. "Shit. I left the helmet inside," she said.

"Then go and get it!" B-07 cried. "It'll be gone in thirty seconds!"

"Thirty seconds?" Mikasa stared in shock. "You mean, we're doing this right now?"

Armin nodded. Hanji took off in the direction of the barn, sprinting. The alien fiddled with the radio. She mumbled something in her own language. Mikasa just stood awkwardly, unable to move. 

"Twenty seconds!" The alien cried again. Hanji had just reached the barn door, and went inside.

"She won't make it," Armin muttered. Mikasa's heart leapt. _No_.

"Ten-"

A car pulled up in the driveway, its headlights on high. The doors slammed.

"Five seconds-"

"That's them," Mikasa whispered. She felt her legs move. She wanted to go back, to apologise to her dads - she couldn't leave the planet on a bad foot.

"Three-"

Hanji came out of the barn, clutching the alien's helmet.

"Two-"

Mikasa took one last look around the cornfield, before her body, and the surrounding area, disappeared completely.

\--

The teleportation lasted less than a second. One moment the kids were there, and in a blink of an eye, they had gone. The only sound was crickets chirping.

The alien's helmet dropped to the ground. Hanji just stared at the clear sky.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy they're in space now. chapter title from Star Trek because I was watching that when I wrote that fic


	14. Emergency

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A girl wakes up in space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some stuff in here that could count as spoilers for the rest of this fic, but honestly it was pretty obvious anyway. So how are you guys coping with the quarantine? Learned any new skills? Started any new hobbies? Watched any good movies/series?

The first thing Historia noticed when she came to was how nauseous she felt. She was drowsy, her head was spinning, and she might just throw up. It was like the world's worst travel sickness. Then she realised that she was laying on a cold, metal floor.

Oh, marvellous, she thought. She'd gone and been captured by aliens.

She opened her eyes, her vision still blurry. She seemed to be in a holding cell, one that looked... off. The walls were light grey, and there were two long blue fluorescent lights on the ceiling. There was what looked like the outline of a door on one wall, and next to it was a speaker. Holding her head, Historia sat up. She closed her eyes to deal with the dizziness.

She jumped when a loud alarm sounded. A voice spoke over the speakers, in the same language that the alien had spoken in. Historia's theory was proven correct, as the door opened. Knowing that she likely wouldn't get another chance like this again, she stood up and ran out the door.

Outside the cell, there was a long hallway, with the same smooth walls. The alarm was louder out here, and Historia could hear shouting in the distance. She decided to walk in the opposite direction to the conflict.

She had to find Ymir, and get out of this place. But in the back of her mind, something told Historia that both of those things seemed impossible. She didn't know where they even were. Was it a space ship? It looked like a space ship. What if they were in space? Maybe there were escape pods. What if the escape pods required security clearance? Well, she'd just have to steal a key card or whatever from one of the aliens.

She wasn't sure how long she'd been walking for. There were hardly any landmarks in the ship's hallways, and she couldn't be certain that she wasn't walking in circles. Frustrated, she turned a corner -

And her suspicions were confirmed. A large window took up most of one wall, and it had a breathtaking view of the cosmos. And, quite small now, there was the earth.

She was in space.

In _space_.

She couldn't take her eyes away from the view, though she wasn't sure whether it was because of how pretty it was or because she was in shock.

She was so caught up in her staring, she didn't comprehend the fact that the noise from the conflict was getting louder. She didn't notice until a door in the wall behind her opened and somebody ran in, closed it behind them, and collapsed against the wall.

The person looked human. The proportions were all right, but their skin was _blue_. A pastel blue, like the colour of balloons expectant parents would buy when they find out their unborn child has a penis.

He saw her, and panicked as well. He pulled his wrist to his face and shouted something into it. Somebody else shouted back over the radio, and Historia could hear some _thing_ else on the other end. Somebody speaking in English. Her heart skipped a beat. That voice sounded just like...

She took off down the hallway. She heard the alien get up and chase her, but she had a head start. That didn't help her, however, as the alien was faster, and soon she was tackled to the ground.

She shouted, and elbowed the alien.

"Stop struggling!" The alien shouted.

"Let me go!" Historia shouted back. The alien pinned her hands behind her back, then pulled her back up to her feet. She kept struggling. "What the hell did you do with Ymir?" She tried.

"We don't have time to talk about that," the alien said. "If you don't come quietly then I'll have to use force."

"Aren't you already using force?" Historia asked sarcastically. The alien didn't answer her, so she wormed her way out of his grip.

"Stop that!" The alien cried, while grabbing ahold of Historia's wrist. She slapped his hand and he pulled it away. "Fine, I'll take you to the Runaway, just stop fighting!"

Historia frowned, but pulled her hand down. 

The alien turned around, and beckoned for her to follow, which she did. He took her back through the ship, speaking into his wrist-radio on the way. The person on the other side started talking faster and more erratically, and the alien started walking faster, before breaking out into a jog. Historia had to run to keep up with him. He pulled out a weapon from his side, and she knew that he was about to enter a fight. She slowed down a bit. She wasn't hyped to get caught in conflict.

Standing outside a sealed door, the alien looked over his shoulder to make sure that Historia was following. He seemed satisfied, and pressed a button that opened the door.

The room on the other side of the door was a mess. There were tanks like what you'd see in an aquarium lining the walls, and several of them were smashed. A liquid spilled across the floor, only a few of the lights were still working, and damaged electronics sparked. Historia heard shouting and fighting further in the room, and the alien charged in. She followed behind.

Two people were fighting in the corner. Or rather, one person was swinging a metal pipe at the other person, who was fending them off with a taser. Historia's suspicions were correct. Swinging the pipe, Eren was shouting up a storm as he attacked another alien, one with a dark blue-grey skin tone. The alien being assaulted noticed the newcomer, and shouted for him to help. The one who Historia had followed came to his aid and jabbed his own taser into Eren's side. He dropped the pipe and fell to the ground.

\--

Historia stood opposite one of the two tanks that was unbroken, one that contained an unconscious Ymir floating in it like the thing Luke Skywalker was in at the start of _the Empire Strikes Back._ A stasis tube, the alien had told her. At least, that was the best English translation for it. The other unbroken stasis tube now had Eren in it. She was in awe, and could do nothing but stare.

"How much damage did he do?" Warrior Clone C-17 (DNA Source: Reiner Braun) asked, as he administered first aid. Warrior Clone E-09 (DNA Source: Bertholt Hoover) looked down.

"A lot. He got to the transporter, most of the stasis tubes. Comms are down, all we have are our personal communicators. We can't put the witness under. All we can do is hope she doesn't try and attack us like he did."

"Have you tried communicating with..?"

Bertholt nodded. "We're too far away. We can't turn back now."

Reiner took his hand. They had what the doctor had stolen, they had the runaway queen, they had the witness. But they'd lost their drone, and they'd lost their teammate. The worst part was that losing Annie wouldn't even matter to their higher-ups. They could always grow another one. She just wouldn't have the same memories or personality.

"They're going to let us leave, right?" Bertholt asked. "We'll have rights. We could..."

Reiner smiled, playing with Bertholt's long, blue-grey fingers. "They'll have to let us do whatever we want," he said. "We've earned it, by this point."

The gentleness and prospect of leaving the empire's service started to get to Bertholt, and he smiled too. Reiner smiled even more, because he'd distracted Bertholt from his worrying. He did a lot of worrying, being that he was the one in charge of keeping the ship running. Sometimes Reiner would joke about him being a _worrier_ more than a _warrior_ , but those jokes never went down well.

"Hey!" Historia shouted. Reiner and Bertholt turned around.

"Are we going to entertain her?" Bertholt asked. He was kind of fed up with humans and half-humans and Eldian royalty - pretty much everyone who wasn't Reiner. He had no more patience left.

Reiner shrugged. "Yeah, what's the tea?"

Historia cringed. "Why did you abduct my girlfriend?"

They looked at each other. Bertholt was of the mind that they shouldn't tell her anything, but-

"Oh, she's basically the puppet queen of our planet. She ran away years ago and we're bringing her back so we can be free," Reiner explained.

Historia stared at them in shock. "A _queen_?"

"Puppet queen. She's just a glorified model."

"What are you going to do with her?" Historia asked. She rocked on her feet, preparing to fight if need be.

"Just put her back, basically," Reiner said. "You'll probably get a cushy place in the court if you want. That is, if they don't try and experiment on you."

Her eyes widened.

"Don't worry, that won't happen," Bertholt said, elbowing Reiner in the stomach. _"We want her to trust us so she doesn't go on a rampage,"_ he said through clenched teeth, in his own language.

Reiner smiled as if nothing was going on. Historia didn't.

"And what are you going to do with Eren?" She asked.

"Our job," Bertholt said. "Our mission. It doesn't concern you."

"Well, it kind of _does_." Historia crossed her arms. "Eren is my friend. You can't just - probe him, or impregnate him with some alien baby, or whatever it is aliens do. He has a family."

Reiner felt Bertholt squeeze his hand.

"This really isn't good," he said, in their language. "He has a _family_."

"Yeah, you know who else had a family? All those people who died on Marley's first moon."

Bertholt frowned at him. Historia was as well, despite understanding nothing they said to each other.

"And, I have a family too," Historia added. "I want to see them again as well."

"Yeah, no," Reiner said. "We have a mission. They'll terminate us if we don't deliver that guy, and you, and her. We can't help with that."

Historia dropped her angered look, revealing the horrified one below. "You mean... We aren't going home?"

Reiner shook his head.


	15. Heaven and Earth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Space is so much bigger than we'd like to think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes the chapter title is from hamlet. happy gay month my dudes

Space is emptier than you might think. And colder. And quieter.

For a brief moment Mikasa was weightless, floating in the sky. Below her was the earth. So tiny.

She wasn't sure how she was still alive. She had always thought that the intense lack of pressure up here would cause them to explode, and she and her friends still looked intact.

Maybe she was already dead. Maybe this was what death is like.

Above her was a giant space craft.

And then nothing.

\--

Mikasa came to in a panic. She was all of a sudden inside the ship, and she took several deep breaths. The ship they had been beamed up to looked rusty, or at least, the part they were in looked rusty. Armin lay on the ground next to her. She offered him a hand up, which he refused. He stood up by himself. Mikasa assumed that the alien would be fine because she had done this before.

"Are you both okay?" The alien asked, concerned.

They both nodded.

"Good. Follow me. I'm going to find the captain."

They followed without question; up here was the alien's domain. She would take charge, and they would follow. The world they knew was far below them. From now on, they knew nothing about what lay ahead.

It did not take long to find the captain, as the captain found them. A tall insectoid figure entered the hallway, clearly annoyed. They said something in a language Mikasa didn't recognise, to which the alien - B-07 - responded in the same language, hands above her head in surrender. She looked over her shoulder.

"Follow my lead," she hissed.

She said something that seemed to placate the captain, who nodded.

"Hitchhikers from "earth"?" The captain asked, in English. 

"Yes," B-07 answered. "On our way to the capital of the Marleyan Empire. We need you to take us there."

"I can take you as far as Orthrys Caine," the captain said.

B-07 nodded. "Fine. Orthrys Caine." She turned back to them with a grimace. That didn't look good.

The captain scuttled off, leaving them in the hallway.

"So what now?" Armin asked.

"At the rate we're going, we'll be at Orthrys Caine in a... a week. Until then, we just wait around and hope they don't put us to work in the mean time."

"A _week_?" Mikasa exclaimed.

"I know. We'll be there quickly. Not so quick as to intercept my crew, but at Orthrys we can find a long-range radio and tell them to come back." B-07 leaned against the wall, and slid down.

Armin nodded in understanding, but he looked clammy and pale. Mikasa pulled at her hair. B-07 looked at her in disdain.

"What, how long did you think space travel took?" She asked.

"I - I don't know." Mikasa's voice faltered.

"Look, just sleep it off or something," she said, closing her eyes.

Armin sat down next to her, and gestured for Mikasa to do so as well. 

"Do you want to like, revise or something?" He asked. Mikasa looked at him like he'd just suggested they steal the declaration of independence. 

"You've missed like, two weeks of school already," she replied. "Four, by the time we get back."

"Well, I wanted to do something to pass the time," Armin said, leaning against her shoulder. "Do you want to watch Netflix, or something?"

Mikasa blinked. She'd left her phone in the restaurant. "I don't have my phone. And even if I did, I don't think we're in range."

A pipe overhead let off some steam. They were in possibly the worst place to sleep.

"It's like an airport," Armin said, out of the blue.

"What?"

"Well, we're sitting against a wall, bored out of our minds, and with nothing to do but wait for god-knows-how-long. Like in an airport." He took her hand.

"The last time I was in an airport was for the Japan exchange," Mikasa said. That hollow feeling filled her again.

It must have shown in her voice, because Armin moved off her shoulder to look at her. "Do you want to tell me about it?" He asked. 

"Not really," Mikasa shrugged. "I didn't have any friends and I had a mental breakdown so I came back."

That was only half of the truth, but Armin didn't need to know that.

"Hmm," he said, but she could not decipher whether it was a tired "hmm" or a contemplative "hmm". "You cut all your hair off too, didn't you?"

Mikasa smiled. "Most of it. I tried to dye it, but the dye washed out. It was a disaster."

She'd been so self conscious of her newly short hair, but after a year with it, she liked the length. 

"Your hair looks good now," Armin said. "It's pretty."

Mikasa smiled, and put a hand to her hair. "Thank you."

\--

Mikasa wasn't sure how long she slept for, but she woke up while being poked. Armin was gently shaking her, softly saying her name. 

"Mikasa, wake up," he said. 

"'m awake," she mumbled. "What's happening?"

He didn't need to tell her, as she saw for herself. Another insectoid alien stood in front of them.

"Get up," they said. "I'm moving you to a proper bed."

Oh, thank goodness. She had an ache in her back from leaning against the metal wall.

The alien took the three of them through the ship. The hall slowly became less and less industrial, and the alien stopped in front of a metal door.

"Bed room," they said. "Empty for you."

"Thank you," Armin said. B-07 nodded, and the alien left.

The room that they had been led to was reminiscent of a camp's bunkhouse. Metal beds jutted out of the walls at around the height of their knees. The mattresses were stiff and uncomfortable, but infinitely better than the wall. 

They stayed in that room for a long time. Armin was right, being on the ship did feel like an airport. At one point, B-07 left the room to go and find food for them. 

"Do you think Hanji told anyone the truth about what happened to us?" Armin asked. He was laying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. 

"It doesn't matter," Mikasa said. "They won't believe her. They didn't believe her when her friend was abducted."

"True," Armin said. "They're probably going to think she killed us."

Mikasa stayed quiet. Of course they would. 

"Or," Armin continued, "that we were kidnapped. I hope they think we were kidnapped. It'd be better than Hanji being accused of murder. Whatever happens, it'll probably drive a wedge between her friendship with your dads. She's your godmother, right?"

Mikasa shook her head. "That's a Catholic thing."

"Oh." 

Another patch of silence. Mikasa wished she was a better conversationalist, but she didn't have anything she wanted to say. At least, not anything she wanted anyone to hear. 

"At least we're on the way now," Armin said. "We're one step closer to finding Eren and Historia."

"Now all we have to do is take them back from from some evil space empire," Mikasa said. She stared at the wall. The feat sounded a lot harder now that she said it out loud. It was a great big universe, and she was only a small human.

"Hopefully, B-07 will be able to contact her comrades and convince them to come back," Armin said. "Hopefully. Oh god, what if one of us falls out of an airlock and into space?"

He sat up immediately, a look of horror on his face.

"That won't happen," Mikasa said, not quite believing herself. _What if it did?_ "I'll... tie you to me, or something."

"Gross." The door to the room opened and B-07 appeared, foil pouches in her arms. She threw one at Mikasa, who caught it with one hand. "Nice catch," she remarked.

"Thanks?" Mikasa watched as B-07 handed Armin his.

"That's all I managed to find," she said, sitting down on an unoccupied bed. "Maybe if he went the quartermaster might give you more. You're cute."

Armin smiled awkwardly, and Mikasa crossed her arms. "What, are you suggesting we prostitute him?"

B-07 glared at her. "No. I'm saying that _we_ aren't good negotiators." 

"And Armin is?"

"Yes." She and Mikasa stared at each other for a solid minute before Mikasa got up off the bed and stood in the corner huffily.

Mikasa heard Armin sigh. "Don't do that, Mikasa, we need to work together."

Mikasa pretended not to hear him. She didn't _want_ to work with B-07. She was the alien that had kidnapped her and Armin's siblings. How did they know she wouldn't abandon them or hand them over to her empire? They didn't. Annoyed, Mikasa shoved her hands in her jacket pockets.

And felt an object. She pulled it out, unsure what it could be. 

_4 tips on coming out to your family._ Oh, yeah. Her heart sunk when she looked at the pamphlet. She'd totally forgotten about it, with all the crazy shit that'd gone on. It felt kind of stupid now. She shoved it back in, and pulled out the other thing. Eren's ring. She turned it over in her hands, swallowing over the lump in her throat. She'd promised to bring Eren back, but now that she was in space, he seemed farther away than ever. 

Space was big. _Really_ big. How long would it take for them to find him? What if they were too late, would this be all for nothing? How would they explain it all to Erwin and Levi? And Linda, too. Two of her kids had been victims of the aliens as well. 

"I promise I'll bring them back," she whispered, tears welling in her eyes.

"What?"

Mikasa turned around. Armin and B-07 were watching her. Armin had a look of concern, while B-07 just looked bored.

"I was..." _Oh god they think you're weird,_ "thinking out loud."

Mikasa stared at her friends, waiting for some kind of response. Armin gave her a curt smile, which she took as a good sign. 

"How are we going to tell our parents about this, when we get home?" Mikasa asked. 

"I guess... I'm not sure." Armin said, hugging his knees. There was a faraway look in his eye. 

"You know, Linda really cares about you," Mikasa said. She remembered something Linda had told her ages ago, about wanting Armin and Historia to be safe despite them being the product of her husband's affair. "She said she sees you as her own."

Armin laughed awkwardly. "That's only going to make me feel guilty, now."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Mikasa said. Armin laughed more at the concern in her voice, which made her start to laugh as well. Soon they were both rolling on their beds with uncontrollable laughter. 

"Why are you laughing?" B-07 asked them. 

Between laughs, Armin managed, "because we're all alone up here! Our parents... they don't know what happened to us! They're going to be worried sick!"

B-07 made a face of disgust. "Why would that be funny?"

"It's not!" Mikasa said. "It's horrible!"

B-07 stood up, and left them in the room. It didn't take too long for Armin and Mikasa to calm down. 

"You know, one of us should probably explain that sometimes humans use humour as a coping device to her," Armin said. "I have a feeling she doesn't know."

"Of course she doesn't know, she thinks we're bastards." Mikasa curled up on her bed. She wasn't sure how long they'd been in space already, but she was tired. It felt like it had been at least a day. How long until they were supposed to get to the port? A week? Well, at least she was one-seventh of the way there.

As she laid her head on the firm pillow, she thought about how they were in space. Space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> havent read over this in months (i prewrite all the chapters) so who knows what mistakes there are. i also want you all to stay safe if you're attending protests/rallies/vigils


End file.
